


Snowflakes in an Hourglass

by Echo_Tango_Romeo



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon)
Genre: Advent Calendar, F/M, Love story but not just that, More like Varian moments of Life?, Next minute tag, Or something of the kind, The writer is lost, Warning: Some people are dying, and there is panic attacks, because... Merry Christmas?, but modern au, this got out of hand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 33
Words: 35,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27799969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Echo_Tango_Romeo/pseuds/Echo_Tango_Romeo
Summary: Life is full of events, some of them happy, some of them sad and Varian has a lot of them linked with Snow.
Relationships: Cassandra/Varian (Disney: Tangled)
Comments: 342
Kudos: 52





	1. This is not a Chapter

Hello ~

Welcome in my advent Calendar, nice to have you here.

It's gonna be a one chapter a day story to wait for Christmas, following Varian in his life. Because Life is complicated, some chapters might be difficult.

So trigger warning: Someone is gonna die and there are panic attacks.

I will put a warning on the beginning of said chapters so if those topics trigger you, look at the note before the chapter.

It's tagged as Cassarian because it's the endgame but for obvious reasons it's not gonna be the only thing happening in the story.

It starts on the 1st of December, and I will try to post around 6pm (Paris time).

The whole story started because I received the word “Snow” when looking for an OS theme (things got out of hand very quickly xD) So you can thank Maryflower for the trouble coming xD

Obviously, the Characters are not mine and I don't own any money on this work -Just white hair out of exhaustion and stress- I just twisted a universe to put them in it. 

The texts are proof-read by Dusky “N°1 FAN Back off” BFF ← She chose the name and I'm not gonna argue with the person responsible for my text to be written in a better English so >>. Send her all the congratulation she deserves, nothing would be as good as it is without her!

Dusky “N°1 FAN Back off” BFF in the place ! Please, don't forget to MOSTLY congratulate ETR for her amazing writing skills. She made me cry my heart out (just so you know, be prepared ♪). Also, I'm very sorry, my corrections aren't perfect, but I hope you get to fully enjoy the ride. 'Cause it's really worth it. (ETR is amazing – don't delete this, it's not being smug if I'm the one saying it.) And I'm out !

I think all is said, I see you tomorrow ~


	2. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello you = )
> 
> First chapter and it's light. (and one hour early because I can post it now, but not in an hour xD)
> 
> I see you on the notes in the end for an announcement (but most of you might already know what I'm gonna say ><)

“Look at me...”

Varian looks at the floor. He doesn't want to look where he's called, it's not a fun game.

“Please, Varian...?”

There's something, on the carpet. And it's more interesting than what is asked of him, right now.

“Please sweetie... Look at mummy.”

Varian raises his head, as if “mummy” was a magic word. It is, somehow. Mummy is good, Mummy is warm. Not as interesting as the carpet, but more comfortable. He lifts his arms up to reach her, but she's so away and not moving to help him...

“Quirin, it's now, or never!”

Daddy is not here, there's a big thing in front of his face and Varian can hear his voice, but it's not part of him anymore.

He bursts into tears.

“Oh, baby, no, shhh, shhh, it's okay!” says Mummy as she grabs him from the floor to hold him.

Varian waits for Daddy to show his face before feeling reassured and cries five more minutes just to make sure that no one will abandon him in the face of imminent Danger.

“It's okay honey. Everything is okay, you see mummy holds you?”

Rivers of crocodile tears are flowing on Varian's cheeks. As big as pearls and as salty as Oceans. But Mummy holds him, warm arms around his little body, whispering a calming song.

“Do you think it's the camera?”

“I don't know....”

He can feel the vibration in Mummy's chest. It's almost enough for him to feel like he is in a safe place. Mummy makes the world safe and happy. Mummy makes the world marvelous and so, so hot. Nothing can happen in that kind of heat.

“It might be... He's so young, maybe he got impressed...”

“He is really your son” Daddy's voice sings.

“Why are you saying this?”

Mummy's hand dances in his hair, sweet and kind, and calming.

“He's nine months, already walking around the place and scared of little things? Peculiar and amazing, just like his mummy”

Mummy laughs against his wet cheeks and he cuddles in her embrace to have a contact, something deeper. The whole world is scary, and so full of things to understand at the same time and it's overwhelming.

“Hey, little buddy, are you ready for a photo..? It's just a camera.”

Varian takes a look at the design and starts crying again as Mummy sighs and holds him closer. He hides his face in her neck.

“I think it's no use Quirin...”

“It's sad. A picture of him on the floor would have been a good addition to the thousand we already have...”

“Don't laugh, a look at the camera would have made a wonderful picture! And it would have made a nice Christmas card for next year.”

“Maybe we coud have it until then”

“Maybe...”

His little body stops trembling, Daddy gives him a kiss on the head and straightens up.

“Oh! Look! It's snowing!”

Mummy moves, and Varian is taller in less time than it takes his brain to register.

“It's so pretty.... Hey, Varian Baby, look at this... It's the Nature's gift at this time of year...”

Varian moves reluctantly because Mummy is pushing a little. And then he catches it.

It's white and moving, falling and he can't touch it. He gives a happy chirping noise, full of saliva bubbles, but the white coton doesn't end up in his hand and there is something not right in this.

He tries again.

And Again.

And when he turns to Daddy -because Daddy grabs thing when Mummy doesn't- he's blinded by light.

“I think I got it.”

Varian blinks once, and twice. And starts crying again.

He's nine months and Snow is slowly falling, in a perfect opposite of the tears running down his cheeks.

Little did he know, that snowflakes were gonna be in his life forever.

Through smiles and tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Thank you for your time on this passage, so yeah, one moment by year of existence xD
> 
> This is gonna be fun ~
> 
> On another note, this Advent Calendar is not the only advent Calendar Froggy, A-Deity and Watazuki are also working on one. We don't have the same way to deal with all this, so it might be rich to have both of them (PS: It might not always be PG13 so read Froggy explanation uu) Today was wonderful and Girls, I can't wait to see more!
> 
> here the link of the collection: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2035303


	3. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so, so, so much for reading this story, every hit makes me smile and don't hesitate to comment, I love to talk with people ~ (but don't feel obligated, I'm just so happy to know that this little Varian's moments are alive in your head for a moment QQ)
> 
> PS: I think, seeing how everything goes, that chapters are gonna be published between 5pm and 6pm (and some minutes because I can't have a proper schedule xD)

Varian looks at his parents under his shiny blanket. He holds his plush against himself and let his head fall on his side.

There is that thing in this thingummy and it just doesn't want to do what he wants.

“Varian, honey, look.”

Mummy takes the red piece and it falls in the box.

“You have to put the pieces in the hole with the same shape. Do you understand?”

Varian makes a face, upset lips and angry nose. His little hand gets inside the box to grab the square but he can't touch it.

“Mummy the one...”

“You want the square piece?”

“Yes...” he chews on words.

Mummy opens the box and takes the little red square to give it to him. Varian seizes the angular wood piece. For a second, it's difficult for him to deal with the teddy bear and what he's holding in his hand. The paper he hides under falls on him and Daddy takes it off.

“Here, isn't it better?” asks Daddy.

Varian looks at the color on the paper. The patterns and the sparkle on it. It's funny to observe but it doesn't keep you warm. Still, he's hypnotized. He extends a hand to take it back but the teddy bear falls and he doesn't know what to do anymore.

There is a lot of things around him. So many things he feels, he hears, he smells, he sees, he touches. He's lost in all of this. It's difficult to understand, to take it all in account. To hold.

He blinks, a strange pain he doesn't comprehend as helplessness raises in his chest, he feels a breath away from bursting into tears and then Mummy puts her hands in his hair and things are easier.

“Want to try it again?”

Varian looks at Daddy's hands when it touches the box and gazes the forms in it. He puts the red figure in place, tries to make it fall like Mummy did a second ago.

And fails.

He giggles, tries again and he can hear Grand-Dad laughing. He doesn't understand how Mummy can do it while he can't and he keeps pushing.

“He will eventually figure it out. This kind of things takes time.” Grand-Dad says, but Varian doesn't really pay attention -or understand-, because he wants the square in the box and that doesn't work.

Daddy is up and Mummy holds a cup of something that smells strange but Varian thinks its a good odour.

He takes a stop, no one's looking at him anymore. In the center of the chair's circle, a meter away from the Christmas Tree, he thinks about how to put a wood piece in a wood box.

Mummy did it. He can do it.

He concentrates hard, put the square in one of the holes and sighs with despair when it doesn't enter the box. Daddy made it, and Grand-Dad too.

He feels the disappointement of a two years old boy, pouts and holds his teddy bear. The red wood piece is his favorite, but the blue shape round is the most beautiful of all and the two of them should work together.

Except they don't.

He turns the box to found if a more beautiful place could be found -something he's done a thousand times already- and, out of hope for the toy, sighs again.

“It's not working, honey?”

Grand-Dad comes to show him how it has to be done, how to put the square in the box and after he succeeds and opens the box for Varian to try again, Varian decides that it's not fun, really, to put the red on the red. And tries the blue again.

“No, Varian you have to-”

Varian opens the box and put the square directly in it, not finding any fun anymore in the fact of failling.

He doesn't catch the look on anyone's face because he hides under the paper the box was wrapped in.

He can hear the laughs, under the shinning silvery blanket and when Mummy grabs him to put a kiss on his forehead, Varian looks at the snowflakes on her sweater.

“My little genius” she says while brushing his hair out of his face.

Varian doesn't understand why it's so funny or why Mummy looks so happy, but it's easier to forget how he's not happy about the square and the blue hole, when Mummy holds him.

Mummy makes everything easier to deal with. He breathes happily in her neck.

“Red, Red and Blue.”

Varian is almost two and he has found his own way to solve problems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, psst, today Froggy's work is PG, do you want to spend a good moment in a bar?
> 
> copy the link ~
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/27835594


	4. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hello, Chapter 3 is out -the writer is slowly understanding AO3, it's fun xD -
> 
> I hope you'll like this chapter ~

Varian holds a carrot and two branches. In front of him, Mummy and Daddy are making scoops of snow.

“Isn't it too little?”

“It's more that it's complicated....” replies Daddy to Mummy.

Varian is in his house's Garden, looking at his parents. He doesn't really understand the point of everything that is happening, but Mummy and Daddy are smiling, so it has to be something good.

“Okay, composing time...”

Daddy takes one of the ball and puts it on the other one. Mummy laughs, applauses and turns to Varian.

“Look honey, isn't it funny?”

Varian shrugs and one of the branches falls of his arms. Daddy puts another ball and all Varian can see is three balls on each other, not the same size nor the same form.

“What's it?” he asks Mummy.

“It's a snowman, Varian.”

“What's for..?”

“It's for... It's a way to play with snow.”

“Why?”

Daddy laughs, with Mummy they share a look that is amused and something Varian doesn't understand.

“Because Snow is fun.”

“Why?” he repeats.

Mummy takes a breath, she makes that face Varian knows by heart now, because he always questions everything and sometimes Mummy just answer “I'll tell you when you are older “ but she always makes that face before answering anything.

“And what if we give him arms? And a face?”

It's not an answer, he knows it but he doesn't say anything.

He lets Mummy take what is in his arms and put the branches on each side of the second ball and then she turns back to him, the carrot in her hand.

“You want to make the nose?”

Varian looks at the happy smile on Mummy's face and nods. She takes him in her arms and approaches him of the third snowball.

“You put the carrot in the middle.”

Varian does as said, strangely surprised by how easy it is to put the vegetable in the snow and looks at Mummy proud and happy.

“Yeah, we need something for the mouth and the eyes, now, let's look around!”

Daddy finds a branch of Fir on the floor, Mummy a rock, Varian another one and the three scoops suddenly have a face. Varian giggles in Mummy's arms when Daddy starts talking with the snowman.

“Oh! We forgot the scarf!”

“Why?” Asks Varian to Mummy.

“So he doesn't catch a cold. A scarf for Mr Snowman” she announces.

Varian doesn't want for Mr Snowman to be cold. So he takes off his own scarf.

“Here Mummy! He can have mine! I don't want him to be cold!”

Mummy smiles, takes Varian in her arms and puts her long scarf around him before putting Varian's red one around Mr Snowman.

“Thank you Madam and thank you little guy” answers the Snowman with a big voice.

“Mummy, I think Mr Snowman is sick... He has the same voice than Daddy when his nose is red!”

His parents laugh, but Varian is really worried. He looks at the snowman from across the window with his bottle of Hot cocoa and he thinks about him at night.

In the morning, when Daddy leaves to work, Varian looks for Mr Snowman.

“Mummy, Mummy!” he starts crying.

“What is it, Varian? Why those big tears?”

“Mr Snowman doesn't have a scarf!”

“Really?” she asks.

She holds him and look at the garden.

“Oh. You're right, maybe the wind took it away...”

“Mr Snowman is cold...”

“It's snow, my darling...”

“No! He's cold” claims Varian.

Mummy rubs her nose against his.

“Let's give him another scarf, then.”

Varian nods, happy that Mr Snowman doesn't have to be cold, that he could have a scarf, maybe a coat too.

“You have a good heart, baby....” Mummy says after they put a scarf and gloves on Mr Snowman.

He is three and the world is full of things to love in the big heart that hides in his tiny body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, do you want to laugh a little and see Varian when he is older?
> 
> Click on the link ~
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/27857045


	5. 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to confess, the fact that the warning moves every chapters and makes chapter 1 being in position 2 made me cringe but, too late to give the chapter a name ><
> 
> I hope your day was good and that this little moment in Varian's life is something you are gonna like ~
> 
> And see you tomorrow ? ><

“Baby, hey Varian, wake up...”

Varian opens two blurry eyes on the ceiling of the bedroom, blinking from sleep.

“Mummy?” he asks in the strangely lighted room.

“It's snowing my darling...” she whispers while taking him in her arms.

Varian melts in the embrace and tries to keep his eyes open.

Mummy stops walking in front of the window. Varian moves his head to look at the sight in front of him. The garden is all blacken by the night, but the snow makes little white points everywhere. He observes it, strangely taken aback.

“It's pretty” he says.

“It's Mummy's favorite thing.”

“Not me?”

“Yes” she laughs before laying a kiss on his head. “Varian, and Daddy. Grand-Dad Xavier and snow.”

Varian feels the icy fear he felt with Mummy's word melting from him in her warmth.

“I love you Mummy...”

“Oh, I love you too, my little Miracle. Mummy loves you more than anything.”

Varian giggles, looks at her and puts a kiss on her chin -he was aiming for the cheek but it was too high. Mummy always smells good, and she's always warm.

They look at the snow and Varian tries to be good and still, but it becomes boring very quickly. He starts moving in Mummy's arms and she holds him with a little more strength.

“Do you see this Varian?”

“Yes.”

“It tells a very important lesson.”

“What is it..?”

“It tells you that when you are with others, you are stronger.”

Varian looks at Mummy, but Mummy doesn't look at him, she is watching the snow. Varian is intelligent, or at least, it's what the teacher says. He is intelligent and precocious, he doesn't have a lot of friends, but he has a lot of good answers.

“But...” Mummy starts.

“But?” he repeats.

“Each and every snowflake is unique. There isn't two that are the same size, the same shape. They're all one of their kind, Varian. It's the reason why, snow can be. Because each element making it is unique.”

Varian frowns in front of the window looking at the white rain of Snow.

“I don't understand...” he says.

“Every Snowflake needs another snowflake to make Snow. But if one of them changes, to look like an other snowflake, then Snow is impossible to make. Everything has to be by itself, and every itself makes a big all for all.”

Varian stares at the snowflakes. He is very concentrated but they all look the same and he doubts that there is any differences between them.

“Why would a snowflake be alone?”

“Because they don't fall into a group, they fall alone.”

“Am I alone, too?”

“No, my darling, never. Mummy and Daddy will always be with you.”

He lays down, resting on his mother's arms, hiding his face in her neck.

“Mummy?”

“Yes?”

“You'll always be with me..?”

“Of course, my darling dear” she laughs before laying a kiss on his forehead. “I'll tell you what, tomorrow we stay home, you and me and we cook cinnamon cookies and drink hot cocoa! We can also make a snowman?”

“No. I don't want another Mr Snowman.” he pouts with a look for Mummy.

“We can make angels, then?”

Varian nods, Mummy makes the best angels.

“And Daddy..?”

“Daddy is working, but we will keep some cookies for him.”

“Okay...” he yawns.

He wakes up in the morning, with no memory of falling asleep. He is cozy, under his blanket and the light coming out of the window is white, pure, almost blinding. When he goes downstairs Mummy greets him with a hug.

They spend the whole day between the Garden and the Kitchen, making a path from the garden gates to the front door. Lying in snow to make angels.

They cook gingerbread, and hot cocoa before watching a movie and when Daddy comes back home, they share the evening with a bowl of soup.

It's one of Varian's happiest memory. The snow, like a blank page where he can write with Mummy and Daddy.

He decides that day, that Snow is one of the thing he prefers on earth.

Mummy and Daddy, Grand-Dad Xavier, Ruddiger the Teddy-bear, and the Snow and it's enough for Varian and his four years of existence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Missing Cassarian as much as I do? 
> 
> A_Deity can solve your problem ~
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/27858613


	6. 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Day 5. It's strange to realize how many chapter have been published already. (and there is so many to go >>)
> 
> I hope I haven't lose too many person over little Varian ><
> 
> Anyway, more family time ~

Varian is slowly walking on the path, one leg after the other.

Snow is not as fun as rain, with rain there are puddles and puddles are fun, because when something falls on it, it makes circles, and circles, and circles again. But Snow doesn't make puddles.

Snow makes slippery mud and it's not fun for his little legs.

“Varian let me take you.”

“No.”

He talks and he walks and he wants to do both even if Daddy doesn't want it.

“Varian...”

“No” he repeats.

Snow is cold and makes that strange thing when you walk on it. It disappears but it's still here. And Varian can't understand how something can be so cold and so here and so not here anymore.

So he looks at his legs while they disappear in the white mud.

Maybe it's falling like this because it's made of water and water melts?

“Varian, give your hands to Daddy, honey.”

Varian pouts. He's five, he should have the right to walk alone. He gives his father his hand.

“We are lucky to have snow at this time of year, don't you think?” Mummy asks.

Varian smiles. He's happy when Mummy's happy. And somehow, snow allows him to make some experiments.

Lately, he does that with Mummy after school. Some experiments, some little studies on what happens when you mix two types of things. Mummy and him made a Volcano two days ago. She sits by his side and talks with him, explains rules to him. It's more interesting than school, and Mummy is nicer than the teacher.

Today, when she saw that it had snowed she told Daddy that it was a day off and took “her men” out. She was singing all morning, happy little flying songs and Daddy looked at her with that strange look he has sometimes.

Varian doesn't really know what exactly has changed, but something has. Mummy and Daddy are different. Sometimes, he stays the night at Grand-Dad Xavier.

It's strange.

“Varian?”

“Why is it snowing after Christmas?”

“Because it happens sometimes, when the weather is colder than usual.”

“Why?”

“It just happens.” Answers Daddy.

Varian doesn't understand. It doesn't seems like a good reason.

He breathes out cold white smoke, sure that it will make clouds to make more snow for Mummy and giggles. Ahead from him and Daddy, Mummy turns her head in their direction and smiles.

“Why are you laughing?”

“I'm making clouds, look!” he shows her “So you have more snow!”

Daddy laughs by his side and Mummy waits for them before taking Varian's free hand.

“Do you want to see a special place, Varian?”

“Yeah!” He shouts, making their hands swing.

“Are you sure? It might not be safe to walk too much.” questions Daddy.

“It's not that far... and wouldn't it be a very good thing to see the place under the snow, together?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” says Varian.

Every minute with Mummy and Daddy is good. They get out of the path, make their way in, between the trees. Daddy holds him on some parts of the way. It's not a long way out in the forest, but Varian's tiny legs don't like it. Still, he's proud, Mummy is as exhausted as he is.

“Do you see this?” she asks him with a finger pointed at the horizon.

It's pretty. Even under the snow, Varian can picture the big field and the line of the horizon is so far from his reach. The light hits the snow and shines on it, putting a thousand of frozen diamonds in his eyes.

“Yes” he enthusiastically nods.

“This view, it's the first thing your father has shown me here. And this place, it's the place where he asked me to marry him.”

“Really?” he frowns.

It's a strange idea, that Mummy and Daddy weren't always married. That at some point, they hadn't been together.

“Yes” she says.

She is sitting by Varian's side, not caring about the snow underneath her, or how wet and cold she could be in her walking outfit. Daddy is in her back and Varian chooses to lean on her side to hug her.

“You were something before being my Mummy and Daddy?”

“Yes, Varian, we were” she answers “At some point, we were just like you.”

“But... Does that mean that...”

“That what, my little heart?”

“That you might not be my Mummy and Daddy later?”

He feels a wave of panic, a fear of being left behind, abandoned in a place without anyone caring about him. All alone.

“No, my darling, never” says Mummy “We will be by your side. Always and forever, no matter what.”

“You promise?”

“I promise, Varian. I swear, even. I will never leave you.”

Varian raises watery eyes to her and hides his face in her chest.

It's okay, as long as Mummy and Daddy are by his side, everything will be okay he decides in his five years old brain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're still here, don't forget to help your ship, and click here:
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/27891670
> 
> Froggy has a story to tell you ~


	7. 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
> 
> This is not gonna surprise any of you, but, yeah, someone is dead in that chapter. There is nothing graphic, or violent, but it can be difficult to read so... Meh.
> 
> If you don't want to read it and still want to read the rest of the story I will put what happens here in the summary of next chapter.
> 
> If you still want to read it, well... Take a hot cocoa, a fluffy blanket and make yourself comfortable?

The room is strangely quiet under the noise

Everything is so black. And so empty and so, so... Strange.

Varian is curled in a chair, blind eyes looking at everything for impossible answers. By his side, there is always someone. Arms cuddling him, gentle words, soft voices. All those persons in the room and not the one he wants to see.

He doesn't understand, a month ago, Mummy was sick.

Now, Mummy is dead.

And it doesn't make sense.

Dad cries and doesn't cry. Grand-Dad Xavier and everyone here, cry. Varian doesn't know what to do.

Varian wants Mummy back.

They have been in a church, and they have said words and there was that big box. Not like the one, in his bedroom that Grand-Dad Xavier made. The one where you have to put the pieces in holes shaped for it.

There is no hole, shaped for Mummy.

But there is one, in Varian's heart. One big and full of tears of sadness. He holds Ruddiger, scared and in pain, suffocated by all the people around him. He wants to hide under the table of the kitchen. He wants to disappear where Mummy is.

Grand-Dad has explained to Varian in the cemetery, in front of the cold turned earth, that they were putting Mummy's body here and since then, Varian can't think about anything but how cold she must be.

“Do you want a slice of cake?” asks someone.

Varian makes no with his head.

“Can I give you a juice?”

Varian makes no with his head.

“Do you need anything?”

“Mummy.”

Everytime, the person in front of him makes a sad smile and touches him. His hair, his cheeks. They hold him, they talk to him, they offer help. But no help is Mummy.

Between the first hour and the thousand one, people just go to Daddy and Varian stays in his chair, in front of the window.

He is the only one who sees the snow. The first flake fell in silence, on the other side of the window. Unseen and melted in the instant. Varian wants to cry because Mummy loves the snow and when he turns to look for her, he realises that all the black clothes are here, because Mummy is not.

Mummy is not here, she is not there. Mummy is somewhere, out of the house, with the snow.

Varian rises from his chair, leaves the living room and cross the corridor to climb the stairs to the bedrooms, but as he sees the hall he catches the sight of Mummy's scarf.

It's a long, soft, blue scarf, Mummy always put it around her neck before leaving the house. Begining of Autumn to the end of Winter. And now, she doesn't have it.

Varian grabs it, Ruddiger still in his arms.

She might be cold. She's surely cold.

He puts his shoes on, takes his coat and gets out. Two steps away from the door, someone grabs his arm.

“Varian? What are you doing?” asks Daddy.

Daddy looks tired, and his nose is red. Varian understands why he forgot the scarf.

“I'm bringing Mummy her scarf.”

“... Varian...”

“She must be cold. She needs her scarf Daddy or she will be more sick.”

“Varian honey, it's not like this. Your mummy she... she won't need her scarf, anymore...”

Varian frowns.

“But it's cold, and she's... She's... not here with us...”

“Varian... She is dead. Mummy, she is dead. She can't feel things anymore, she doesn't need her scarf.”

Varian moves his head from left to right. It doesn't make sense. It just doesn't make sense. Everyone keeps telling things about it, about how she's not here anymore and still with him. And it doesn't make sense.

“Daddy, where is Death..? I want Mummy to have her scarf.”

Daddy hugs him and he can feel that he cries. So Varian starts crying too.

“She said she won't leave... Where is Mummy? I want my Mummy! Daddy, I want my Mummy!”

In the snow, with the cold wind, in his father's embrace, Varian and his six years learn the weight of lost and the freezing silence of the impossible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've realized that the end looked like Cassandra's being left behind in her memories, but the sentences were impossible to change so... It is what it is?
> 
> If you are here and need comfort: Froggy write something but it's not really PG13 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27911779,  
> Or go check Adi works? :https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Deity/pseuds/A_Deity  
> And/or Colt: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColtDancer/pseuds/ColtDancer  
> Or you can visit some good artist on IG and Tumblr:  
> https://www.instagram.com/_watazuki_/  
> https://www.instagram.com/alchemisttree/  
> https://dg-darkfantasy.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art  
> (I wish I could show you Mary incredible pieces but there is no IG or tumblr so... ><)  
> Or watch a cute kitten video?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5as5Cyv_F0
> 
> But don't kill the writer, or you will not have the next chapters >> (but comment section can turn into support group uu)


	8. 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So for those of you who didn't read chapter 6. Varian's mother is dead due to a disease and Varian doesn't understand the concept of Death. He wants to bring his mother her blue scarf that he spots in the entry hall and when the thing is proved impossible, just cries in his father arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone, I have no word to tell you how grateful I am for your comments on chapter 6! QQ I was so anxious about posting it that I might have been carried away with the notes ><
> 
> Sorry?
> 
> This one is lighter and new characters appear (finally \o/)

It's so cold that his breath is stuck in his throat.

It started snowing an hour ago and even if the snow doesn't stick and melts the minute it touches the floor, it still feels like every inhalation is about to burn Varian's lungs.

Daddy should be here. Or Grand-Dad. Someone should be here.

Except there is no one and Varian and his enormous schoolbag are waiting in the winter wind.

“Your parents are late?” asks someone close to him.

It's a girl, big face hidden behind a lilac scarf and a pink beanie. Her cheeks are red but it's not really important because the first thing Varian can see is her green luminous eyes.

He nods.

He had gradually stopped talking during the year. The words lost their meaning. They just became chains of letters melted together to make strange sentences almost meaningless. And he doesn't see the point in trying in that weather where every phrase he could use to talk about his situation would just make his throat hurt more.

“My Babysitter too...”

He nods again, with nothing to say. There is a hole in his sole and it's allowing everything to turn wet under the snow.

The girl moves a little, opens a pocket on her bag and takes off a cereal bar.

“Do you want some? It's strawberry and Chocolate.”

Varian looks at her gloved hand and the half bar in it. He purses his lips, thinking about his answer for a long time. At this point, most people, give up and say something about how strange he is, but the girl doesn't move. Her smile is hidden behind her scarf but lights up her eyes. Varian extends his hand toward her and takes the treat.

“Thank you...” he whispers with a rough difficult voice.

He was right, it hurts to say something in that weather.

“I'm Rapunzel” she announces before biting her half of the bar.

“Varian.” he answers.

He cuts through his part, a little afraid that she will laugh, but she just looks happy to have someone to wait with. She talks about how she likes snow, how she wishes it would stay so they could have a snowball fight or make snowmen. She has a long talk by herself, but it doesn't seem to bother her that Varian doesn't reply.

She doesn't act like Varian expects anyone would but it's nice not to be judged for once, and a tension he never knew he felt, loses some of its hold on his shoulders.

“Raps!”

They both jump out of surprise and look at the person calling. Rapunzel shouts something before running to the newcomer and Varian is in awe.

Rapunzel is holding the most beautiful girl Varian has ever seen in his whole life -and it's only seven years, but it's all he has ever lived. So it makes a lot.

She has white skin, cut by short black curls. She wears a dark leather jacket and a burgundy beanie.

Varian can't take his eyes off of her.

“Cassandra, Varian is waiting alone, can we stay with him?”

Cassandra.

It's an incredible name, Cassandra. Varian moves his lips, silently tasting every letter that composes it.

Cassandra turns to him. Her eyes, a hypnotizing shade of green full of gold diamond, catches his silhouette and Varian tries to hide in his clothes not to be noticed.

Everytime someone sees him lately, it's with a touch of pity and a lot of exhaustion for his inability to be normal -or at least it's what they say. But Varian doesn't feel strange . The world is strange, not him. And Cassandra simply looks puzzled.

“Your parents are not here?”

He moves his head, right to left and raises his eyes a little -to see more of her or to be seen, he'll never know.

Cassandra looks around and sighs, approaches with one of her arm around Rapunzel's shoulders.

They wait for another ten minutes in a strange repetitive speech he already had with Rapunzel, before Grand-Dad arrives. He looks around and get to Varian, apologizes. He thanks Cassandra, exchanges words with her and they leave in different directions.

Varian turns his head, before they reach the end of the pavement. He catches the last reflection of the pale sun on Cassandra's raven hair before she and Rapunzel turn and are impossible to see anymore.

“How was your day?” asks Grand-Dad once they have crossed the road.

Varian shrugs, for a minute the silence takes place between them, walking along their side and for the first time, Varian feels trapped in it.

“It was good.” Varian answers.

Grand-Dad looks at him, he can feel his big hand hardening its grip.

“And you... Talked with them..? The two girls I mean..?”

“A little...”

“You know... I know them, or at least Cassandra, maybe, we could organize something with her and the girl she takes care of?”

Varian blinks, the idea of seeing Cassandra again sounds good and Rapunzel is nice... Or at least she seems nice.

“Would you like it?”

“Maybe...” he answers a little unsure.

Grand-Dad smiles and squeezes his hand.

Varian is almost seven years old, lost in his head, but under clouds raining snow, he lets the world enter his life one more time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't seen the last entry in the Advent Calendar made by Froggy it's here:
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/27933502
> 
> Don't miss it, it's a pearl ~


	9. 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning! Warning! Warning!
> 
> Panic attack uu (yeah it's a short warning xD)
> 
> It's not something chapter6 level for me, so I think it should be okay, nothing graphic or violent, but still happening so if you don't feel okay with this, better avoid this chapter.
> 
> Also, I've just learn that I won't be home for chapter 25 QQ which means it has to be post in the morning for me (maybe still during 24 for some of you) or later on the evening for me. I think I already know the answer, but if you have a moment you think more convenient for you, tell me in comment, I will found a way (or maybe it's gonna be just on time because it's not gonna be a too long day? Who knows.)

“Good-morning sleepy head.”

“Goodmrooonin'” Answers -grumbles- Varian.

From a place at the kitchen table, Cassandra giggles. She stands up and put a bowl of milk in the microwave, while Varian falls on a chair, still half asleep.

“You had a good night?”

“Yes...”

It took him ages to fall asleep. The snow was falling outside and he was unable to sleep, unsure he would see Cassandra in the morning. He spent half of the night reading, glancing angrily at the snow as if a look at it could stop the fall.

“Your father said he wouldn't be here before night fall, so... Homework and then, whatever you want...?” she offers before putting the bowl in front of Varian.

He shrugs. Homework is boring. It's too easy. Being in front of them and having to explain what is obvious for him is something he grew to hate more and more.

“Do you want to do something specific or no idea?”

Varian looks at her, swallows his mouthful before answering.

“None... And you..?”

“I have an essay due on Monday... so if you don't mind I will take some time to work on it and leave you with a movie at some point.”

He hides his disappointment behind his bowl of hot cocoa. Cassandra started coming a year ago to look after him when his father can't be here -and it's something that happens a lot-, and Varian might secretly enjoy to sit on his couch, close to her and watch a movie.

It's just comforting not to be alone and Cassandra is... She is something new and attractive and Varian doesn't see how, with someone like her by his side, anything could ever happen to him.

“I'll clean this, go fetch your schoolbag” she announces as she puts the bowl in the sink.

Varian's work is done in less than an hour. Cassandra barely looks at it, because she had learnt to trust him at some point during the time they've spent together and after she's checked that he's done it all, she puts a DVD on TV and starts working on the little desk, in the corner of the living room.

Varian has no memory of when he fell asleep, but he wakes up under a blanket, lying on the couch with a turned-off TV.

Cassandra is nowhere to be seen. He cuddles in the blanket and looks for her in the house, but he can't find her.

Something tights-up inside of him. Something like a cold fear falling on his chest and holding his rib-cage.

It's getting strange to breath.

He doesn't know if he walks or if he runs at this point and when he enters the corridor leading to the front-door, he gets hit by a red point in the coat hanger.

It's the scarf of Cassandra. The big, wool scarf of Cassandra.

And she's not here.

But her scarf is.

And something breaks in him, something he hadn't realized was there, but he feels it in the bottom of his stomach, heavy and suffocating. He raises a hand to touch the fabric and it's almost struggling him.

Where is she? What is happening? How is it that he is alone? And why is her scarf here? And why doesn't she have it? Is she dead?

She can't die... She wasn't sick... Mummy was sick and Cassandra is not and.... And... And.... And what if she is dead? And where is Death anyway? He doesn't want to be left alone again. And... and....

His breath is wheezling. His whole body contracted. Fear is drowning him. It turns around him. Death. Snow. Mummy. Scarf. Cassandra. Alone. Alone. Alone. Alone.

Alone.

“You're awak- Varian?”

She enters the room surrounded by pale light. A mirage.

Breathing is so hard.

“Hey, Varian, what is happening?”

He answers. He swears, he does. The words are bubbling in sobs. Voice cracking, high and falling. Burning in his throat.

“Varian!? You're hurt?”

She's cold. She's so cold when she puts her hand on his face. Is Mummy cold too?

“Varian. What is it?”

He holds her. A strong embrace, almost breathtaking as he chokes on his pain. It hurts. It hurts so much.

“Sh... I'm here... I'm here, it's okay.... Varian it's okay...”

He spends so much time crying that he can't feel anything else but his hurt throat and his sour body when he's dryed out.

Cassandra has been brushing his hair back the whole time and when the silence falls, interrupted only by his tired dry sobs, she puts some distance between them.

“What happened?”

“I don't know....” he tries to say in a crooked voice.

“Varian, you've just had a panic attack... Do you know what triggered it?”

He looks at her, unable to tell her the truth. A shiver runs along his collarbone, and he tries to curl over himself to control it.

“I don't know....”

“Hey” she says to reassure him. “It's okay, I'm not angry, I just want to understand...”

Varian holds himself, arms crossed around his torso and bites his bottom lip, fighting against a new wave of tears. Cassandra sighs, nothing judgmental, but something strange and then she rises.

“Come, I will make you something hot to drink, are you hungry?” he nods a no. “Okay, hot cocoa and a nap, then..?”

“You'll... You'll stay with me..?”

She looks at him, her lips move and then she replies.

“Yes, I won't leave you.”

Varian still holds her hand on the path to the kitchen.

He is eight, and he's had the first panic attack in a long list of coming ones, ignorant of the fact that the fear of being alone is going to follow him his whole life. But sure that Cassandra is a remedy against this pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writer note: Cassandra doesn't check Varian's homework because when she does he explains her with so many details easy things that she feels stupid. And she has too much self love to allows a eight years old boy making her re-thinks 2+2=4 at sixteen.
> 
> And have you read Adi new Advent Calendar entry?
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/27954143
> 
> It's cute and mirroring what's happening here, somehow, so it makes day 8 looks like a circle ~


	10. 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So yesterday possibly triggering chapter ><:
> 
> Cassandra has been hired as Varian baby-sitter for something like almost a year and Varian really likes having her around because she makes him feel safe. He didn't really slept the night before and after homework, fell asleep on the couch. When he wakes-up, Cassandra is nowhere to be seen and he has a panic attack when he sees her red scarf in the same spot he has seen his mother's scarf two years before. Cassandra cames back and calm him, and Varian feels like she is the remedy to everything in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have any idea about what to say here xD
> 
> So, hm... Hope your day was/is/will be good?

Rapunzel wears Snowflakes as earrings. They are little and discret, but they are here, in plain March.

“It didn't snow this year, it felt unfair so I put a little snow in my life, by my own means..” she had explained when he had asked, earlier.

She's in Middle School, now, she's started two years ago, but she doesn't act like one of those stupid, too proud, mean persons he met before and she talks to him like nothing has changed.

It's a day out. Or at least it's a Saturday, in a park with Rapunzel and her mother. That happens from time to time, when Cassandra needs to work for school -she has an exam at the end of the year- or when Varian is in the city to talk with his therapist.

That thing is new.

He's not sure he likes it. Being in a room with a woman waiting for him to talk and acting like she understands him more than he can. It's almost like school.

Varian is surrounded by people who know better than him what he is supposed to be and they are wrong.

“Did you miss it?”

“Missed what?”

“The snow?”

“No”

Snow is scary, snow is something that can get you lost in it, and it's cold. You have to be careful about Snow or you will be sick. And being sick is not something Varian likes.

“What is happening with you today?” she asks from her place on a swing.

“Nothing...”

“Varian, I know when you lie.”

“... Do... Do you think I'm strange?”

Rapunzel makes a face. Literally, for a second, she has her mouth open and her big green eyes bulging and panicked. Varian doesn't read people's reactions very well, but he has learnt them. What they do when they are nice, or not nice, when they hate him or they are trying not to hurt him. The last one doesn't happen a lot but when it does, it looks like Rapunzel in this instant.

“No. No. I don't, why?”

Varian moves his legs in the dust under his own swing. The park is almost empty because it's cold outside, but Rapunzel really wanted to go out and her mum gave up for an hour.

“Because I am.”

“No, Varian you are not. You are.... Special! But it's not a bad thing.”

Varian feels like it's a bad thing. Everything would be so much easier if Mummy was still here. She would make him normal. He would be normal.

“It's a bad thing. It is... It's a bad thing.”

“Varian it's not.... It's cool. You are better than all the others. I like you more.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

She smiles, teeth showing. It makes her eyes smaller and almost blurs the freckles on her cheeks. Rapunzel is beautiful, and clever and she has a lot of friends. She's good at this. She really is easy to like.

“You know... I'm like you, only child and all, and my Dad is not here anymore... So... I don't feel very normal either but... You are like my little brother.”

His cheeks burn and he keeps his head down to look at the dust on his sneakers. He doesn't know how to answer. Grand-Dad is kind, Dad is kind too, at least when he's not making everything more difficult. But that's it. No one else is.

Except for Cassandra. Cassandra calls him “nerd” or “genius” and puts a hand in his hair. She makes him talk about projects from time to time and makes pasta with ketchup, never forces him to eat vegetables. She takes time for him. She is kind.

But it's not...

“Do you miss him?”

“Who?”

“Your Daddy..?”

Rapunzel's swing stops. It's perfectly still by Varian's side and he can feel the silence falling over him. He probably said something he wasn't supposed to say. Something that will make her hate him. He raises his head to her and waits for the sentence that will end their friendship.

“I miss him a lot. At school, they've done a day with parents to talk about their jobs and all. And Mum was there of course but... Yes.... I miss him. I really miss him.”

Varian bites his bottom lip. Comprehension flowing through his body.

“I miss Mummy too.”

Rapunzel smiles from her swing and then jump to stand.

“Here, take this!” She offers with a hand on her ear. “So every time, you miss your mum, you will have this to remember that somewhere, someone feels like you and that you are not alone!”

Varian blinks several times before Rapunzel puts the earring she's just taken off in his hand.

The little Snowflake shines in his glove and Varian looks at it without really understanding how this little thing is supposed to ease his pain. But it's almost warm in his chest when Rapunzel takes it back to pin it on his turtle neck and Varian decides that it's okay to have a Snowflake earring on his clothes.

Three weeks after his ninth Birthday, Varian just received one of the most incredible present of his life. But he is too young to understand it for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have you seen Froggy last work? You have to! Here the link ; )
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/27972530


	11. 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone ~
> 
> Did you miss Cass? I miss Cass. Let's bring back Cass ~

As the last bus of the evening starts off, Varian hides in the Center-place.

He won't come back home tonight. He won't come back ever. If his father wants to have another life with Rapunzel's mother and Rapunzel as a family, Varian refuses to be a part of this.

He's just going to leave, find a place to stay and work and no one will stop him from doing so.

But it's a cold evening and he hasn't thought about taking a blanket when he left in the morning. He just packed ham sandwiches and his favorite juice.

It doesn't really matter he decides as he walks in the city. He wears gloves, a beanie and a scarf, it should be okay for him until he finds a place to stay.

“Varian? Why are you here?”

Varian turns to be almost face to face with Cassandra. She's in front of a Movie Theater with her phone and her nose is red.

It's not what he expected.

“I'm...”

“Where is your father?”

“He... He's not here....”

“Then who is with you?”

“... No one.”

“Varian it's- You can't be alone, it's not safe.”

“I'm big enough for this. And you are alone too.”

Cassandra rolls her eyes and comes to him.

“You look freezing. Does your dad know you're here?”

He doesn't answer, but when she puts her hands on his face, it feels like the skin is about to fall to pieces.

“Varian, does your dad know that you're here?”

“... No...” he gives up.

Cassandra sighs.

“He must be worried, Varian. Did you miss the bus?” she asks as she takes her phone.

She's going to call his father Varian realizes.

“No!” he shouts, throwing a hand on her phone.

She looks at him, surprised. There is something else shining in her eyes and Varian starts worrying.

“I don't want to see him. Never.”

“Did you two have a fight?”

Varian looks away, the reason of his anger too big for his mouth to say. He looks at the pavement and then at Cassandra and she purses her lips.

“Did he touch you, or punch you...? Because if it's the case Varian, we have to go talk to the police...”

“No... No. He... No.”

She sighs.

“Okay, listen. I will cancell my date and I will tell your dad that you are with me-”

“No!”

“And you will stay one night at my flat. But tomorrow Varian, you go back with him”

“No... Please....”

Varian doesn't want to see him. He can't trust him.

“Varian... Unless it's something that puts your life in danger... I have to talk to your Dad. He's surely worried sick and he might have already called the police for kidnapping. If I don't tell him that you are with me, I will be in trouble.”

He takes a big breath and gives up, lets her call his father. He doesn't want to see him again, but he surely doesn't want Cassandra to be in trouble.

“My flat is a twenty minutes walk from here” she announces before heading in a street.

Varian silently follows her, the words she's exchanged with his father turning in his head like a bad song. It serves his father right to be worried. He shouldn't have replaced him and Mummy.

They get up the stairs, stop in front of a door and she opens it for him. It's a little place, no entry hall, a kitchen in the living room and two other doors. Surely the bathroom and her bedroom. She takes off her coat and Varian feels the heat of the place biting his freezing skin.

He didn't realize how cold he was before being inside.

“I'll make dinner, you should take a shower to warm up” she declares from behind another door “and then, we will need to talk, Varian” she finishes, pushing a towel in his direction.

The water burns even if it's not that hot and he spends a big amount of time under it. His skin is red and tickling when he gets out to dress and finds Cassandra in the kitchen with two rice plates.

“I think it's overcooked” she warns him before sitting down in front of him.

It is.

“Varian, what happened?”

He moves his rice from one side of the plate to the other one.

“... He's abandoning me and Mummy.”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

Varian puts his fork on the table. Giving up on eating.

“He's... He said that we are gonna live with Rapunzel and her mother after this summer because.... Because he is in love with her and that we are gonna be a family from now on.”

“... And you are not happy, about having a sister and someone to take care of you?”

“She is not my mother. She is not Mummy!” Varian explains a rush of anger running through him.

“I know Varian, but... She doesn't have to be. It's not what is happening, here.”

“Yes it is. It is.”

Why won't she understand? Why is she acting like he is the one being wrong here?

“Varian...” she begins before stopping, just a word after she started.

She rises from her chair, comes close to him and takes him in her arms.

“Don't cry, it's okay.”

“No...” He sobs “I want my Mummy... He is forgetting Mummy... Cassie, I want my Mummy....”

“No one is forgetting her, Varian, no one.”

“No ! he is...”

“Varian, he can't forget her, he just can't.”

“Then why is he replacing Mummy..?”

“He is not... It's not it.... Varian no one can replace her. Never... It's... It's not like that at all, okay... It's not that.”

“It is.... If he loves Mummy, he can't do this....”

Why can't she understand..? Why can't she see that he's telling the truth?

“Everyone keeps saying that Mummy is still here. If she is still here, he can't do this. He can't. He can't abandon Mummy. He can't.”

“Varian, shhh, no one is abandoning anyone okay..? No one... It's more complicated than this... It's.... Your mo-mummy she is not here anymore but her love and the love you have for her, they are still here and they will never disappear, do you understand..?”

It's not enough, he wants to say, it will never be enough, it's not enough.

“I miss her...” He cries

“I know.... Shhh, I know... It's okay, she would be proud of you, it's okay...”

“I don't want her to go...”

“Her love is here with you, it's okay, she loved you Varian, it's all that matters... Okay? She loves you and she would want for you and your father to be happy...”

He cries for what feels like centuries in Cassandra's arms. When he stops, wet cheeks and numbed ideas, snow has started falling, and the whole street is white.

She makes him a place to sleep in her bed and takes the couch. Varian doesn't want to let go of his Mummy, he doesn't want a new family, he's still angry at his father and he is scared.

But in Cassandra's bed, under blankets that smell like her, while watching the snow falling he hopes that the world will be white and unchanged in the morning, that no one will be able to make him move from where he lies.

Because Varian is maybe just ten, but he is sure that you can't be appart from people you love and he doesn't want to be appart from Cassandra.

Never.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Family is a strange business and sometimes it can be a gift.
> 
> Talking of gift, Froggy makes us one ~
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/27989550


	12. 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone ~
> 
> How's life doing? Better than Varian I hope !

It has been snowing all night and when Varian wakes up, there is at least Fifteen inches of Snow all around the house.

No need to say school is cancelled and everyone is grounded.

Varian decides that he hates snow with a burning passion. More than he hates therapeutic sessions or bad jokes at school or going out of his bedroom.

Because no school means staying home. And if his father needs to go out to help the other farmers to clean the roads and the fields, it also means that Varian is alone with Rapunzel and Arianna and it's something he tries to avoid since they moved in, in July.

“Hey Varian?” asks Rapunzel from the other side of the wooden panel of his bedroom door. “Do you want to play a game?”

Varian is confused. He likes Rapunzel, she is a good friend, and maybe a good sister figure. But she is not his sister. And before Arianna became his father's... thing, he liked her. Now, he doesn't know anymore.

“It would be more fun, if we were three...”

It's always this idea. It's better when we are more. Varian thought his life good when they were less.

He puts down his book. An old one, about Newton, that belonged to Mummy when she was a little bit older than him. He takes a new one every time he visits his Grand-Dad because it's comforting to have something of hers. It feels good not to let her go.

“What game do you want to play..?”

It's not that Rapunzel and Arianna are mean, or bad, or anything. It's that somehow, they don't belong here. In this part of his life. They belong somewhere out of home.

But they arrived, with Rapunzel paper lanterns and her painting material. They put up new decorations in the living room, new coats and shoes in what they call the entry hall. There is an unknown strange perfume in the air and it's like, with them in the place, everything has changed.

So he hides. He locks himself in the only places they can't reach, in the old armchair lost between a wall and a shelf, buried in a book. He keeps his head down during dinner time, stays as long as he can in the School library, anything not to be with them.

Anything not to feel like he is too much.

Anything not to feel that he is not home anymore.

And he is angry.

He's angry at his father for having them here and at Arianna and Rapunzel for being here. At his therapist for asking him stupid questions about obvious facts. At people at school looking at him like He is the one having a problem. He is angry at everyone and everything and why is it so hard to understand?

He doesn't talk about it, he doesn't say a word, he acts distant and he stays in places where they are not.

He misses Mummy and he hates her. Nothing would have happened if she was still alive. Nothing would have been this difficult with her by his side. Mummy would have protected him, Mummy would have made the world a place to feel safe. She would have listened to him, and helped him, she would have made everything so easier.

But Mummy is dead and Rapunzel and her mother are here, acting like it's normal and logical and making themselves a place in Varian's safe-place and not making any other mistake he can talk about to his father.

And this is maybe the worst part. His Father who asks him to make some effort, to be more kind, to play along. Like the fact that Varian is not shouting hate words around isn't already a proof that he is making efforts.

It's unfair. It's unfair like everything since Mummy is gone and he wants to punch walls and to scream out of rage and hatred.

It's unfair, it's so unfair, it's so, so unfair.

Sometimes, he thinks about that afternoon when Cassandra spotted him in front of the movie theater and called his father and he has regrets. He should have stayed with her. He should have hidden in her flat, stuck in the middle of snow. It would have been something good to make a life with her instead of discovering that he doesn't belong in his own anymore.

“I don't know... Maybe you could choose?”

Varian fights himself to keep his answer “How about your mother and you, you pack everything and you leave?” But it's not a good answer and it's not something he has any right to say if he wants to avoid for his father to scream again.

“I'm tired Rapunzel...”

“Oh... Okay.... Maybe later, then..?”

“Yeah, maybe later.”

Surely Never.

It's a snowy day that trapped him in his house with some people Varian doesn't want to be with and it's the perfect metaphor of something he can't understand yet. Because Varian is eleven, and he's just entered puberty.

Good luck to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today Froggy's OS is a little bit up rated for a paragraph of naked torso description uu (nothing more than this.)
> 
> If it's not a problem for you, then, here the links:
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28007229


	13. 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello ~ Did I mention, that I love this chapter? I love this chapter.
> 
> Just so you don't stop suspending your disbelief, know that the following conversation is something that happens in my life some times ago, with adults perfectly sober and all, so it might be a little exaggerated, but still the story is true.
> 
> There is a "*" somewhere, it's an incorrect, incorrect quote, I can't found in my save files QQ so totally not mine, but soooo fun to use ><
> 
> I think all is said >< Read well?

“You can't be serious?”

“What? It's not the right answer?”

“I can't even understand how you've found this result...” Varian sighs in front of the division.

At his side Lance looks at the paper page in front of him like he can't comprehend that he's wrong.

“Okay, show me what you have done?”

“I don't remember.”

“What do you mean 'you don't remember?' ”

“It's maths anyway, who understands anything to maths?”

“Me? Anyone who has been in school until at least eight?”

It's an easy problem, a really easy problem. Varian was doing it when he was five. Mummy explained it to him at this age and he solved it in the blink of an eye.

“Let's try something stupid.” he gives up. “You have eleven friends and one-hundred-and-forty-four candies, how do you share them for each of you to have the same amount of lollipops?”

“I don't share my candies.”

Varian is a second away from bursting into tears.

“You have eleven friends and one-hundred-and-forty-four candies and those friends stole some, now, you all have the same number of candies. How many candies do each of you have?”

“I have one-hundred-and-forty-four candies and they lost a friend.”*

Across from Lance, Eugene laughs. Varian hates them with all the strength of a teenager. A week ago, Cassandra came to see Rapunzel. The two girls are still in touch and Varian always finds a reason to go out of his bedroom when she is here.

He misses her.

And every-time she sees him, she puts her hand in his hair and says something like “Grow up, nerd.” “New SF reference on your T-shirt, genius?”. When Cassandra is here, he feels alive and suddenly, he matters.

He was glancing at his reflection in the mirror of his dressing when she knocked on his bedroom door. He took his best cool guy stance before offering her to enter.

She smiled in this incredible way that put stars in the sky and started talking about two of her “friends, for lack of a better word, who really want to go in another country and have a one in a lifetime chance to do so but need some basic school knowledge and can you please do something for their maths because you are a genius and they are stupid, and I really, really, want them gone?” And Varian gave her his best Playboy smile -not spoiled by his dental appliance- and accepted.

But he would have taken five minutes to do so, if she had warned him about their mathematics knowledge -or lack thereof.

“This is not the point. Lance how can you have 144 divided by 12 making 14,4?”

“Because it's the result I've found.”

“So if we multiply 14,4 by 12, we will find 144?”

“No, we will find 156.”

“How... How. What? No! Come on, make an effort here!”

He is sure they are just doing this to get on his nerves. He is sure it's a joke and it's not fun because he's already the one everyone laughs at, all the time.

“Eugene, please tell me, you understand, this.”

“To be honest kiddo, I disagree with the result of the multiplication you made me correct a minute ago, so.”

“It's zero, Eugene. Everything multiplied by zero makes zero.”

“I understand that, but there was a lot of number before zero and the result number, wasn't zero.”

“But it doesn't matter because this number was multiplied by zero.”

“Hm.... Agree to disagree.”

“How old are you, again?”

“Twenty two and Twenty-four, why?”

“Nothing.”

He's gonna point this out, next time he sees his therapist to prove that adults are dumb and that they should listen to him when he points out their mistakes.

“For the last time, you can't do what you want with Math, there are rules to follow.”

“Well, it's not like math are an exact science.”

“Math are an exact science!” Varian says -and doesn't shout because he's under the habit to control himself but really, it was close-

“Well, okay. The number Pi?”

“What with Pi?” Varian repeats, already scared.

“We don't know the number and yet we use it, which means that every calculation made with Pi is incorrect.”

“It's not what it means, Eugene.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Then what is it?”

“It's.... You would not understand. You basically don't understand how to make simple divisions and multiplications!”

“Because it doesn't make sense and we don't need it!”

“How don't you need it?” Varian despairs.

“Because there is a calculator on every cellphone and it will give us better results than calculation made by hand.” Lance explains.

Varian opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again and takes a long – meant to be- calming- breath.

“Okay, then just use your calculator if it can explain you better than I do.”

“Mine is broken” announces Eugene.

“How can you know this?”

“Because the multiplication you made me correct makes zero on my phone too.”

“Because it's supposed to be zero.”

“Meh....”

When they leave later in the afternoon Varian is exhausted and thinking about burning the world to the ground. Arianna and Rapunzel, who had been shopping, came back a second after Varian has seen Lance and Eugene disappear in the falling snow.

“So how was your day with your friends?” asks Arianna when he gets in the kitchen to help with some groceries.

“They aren't my friends and I hope to never see them ever again.”

“... Do you wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

It's almost his birthday, and a few weeks before he turns twelve years old, Varian hates the snow falling from the sky to hide the shooting stars. He would need a miracle to find someone who understands him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pssst, if you are still here -and missing Lance and Eugene already-, might be a good moment for a cookie?
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28025682


	14. 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello ~  
> I will save you the panic attack of "This is the middle chapter of the Advent Calendar!" And leave you with...
> 
> ... All my good wishes? ><

It's the winter holidays. Varian is having a very bad time.

“I'm just asking you to be more... friendly. To play your part!”

“I don't do anything! You can't reproach me anything!”

“You stay in your bedroom all the time Varian! This is not healthy!”

His Father hired him for Christmas market. He is with him all morning, from five in the morning to two in the afternoon. He's been stuck with him for three days. And for three days, he's barely slept.

“What do you expect me to do then?!”

“Spend some time with us!”

There is moment in his life, that Varian remembers with an impossible exactitude.

“Why?”

And tomorrow, it's an anniversary.

“Because it's what family does!”

The one of his mother's Death.

“We aren't a family!”

His Father pulls over. Varian feels the time slowing down. He is going to shout. Again. He is going to ask him to get out of the car and get lost.

It doesn't matter. He is already lost. He has already spent more than half of his life without his mother.

“I don't know what to do anymore.” his father whispers.

“You're gonna ask me to lose myself in the snow ? Make it look like an accident.”

It's unfair, and it's awful, but Varian is bitter and angry. Varian is about to blow-up.

“The best day of my life, was the one your were born.”

Varian looks at the man by his side in the car. For the first time in his life, he can picture his father's exhaustion.

“I was so happy and so scared. The nurse put you in my arms and you were so tiny... And so incredible... I was sure, that I would break you. But your mother she had a gift with you. She truly had. When I got home from work, I looked at the both of you and every worry I had... it disappeared.”

“Oh, nice tale, father!” Varian wants to answer with all the venom in his body.

“You are more intelligent than most people Varian. We knew from the start that you were peculiar and that your brain... We had you tested. You surely don't remember this, but when you were three a specialist told us that you were precocious. You were supposed to go in a special school. Your mother was against it. And we didn't have enough money for it. We left you in a public school and you mother worked at home with you.”

It doesn't change anything. It doesn't change what is happening and all that his father's betrayed.

“When your mother died... You stopped talking and you started having panic attacks and I was so powerless so... I-I'm a failure as a father, Varian. I'm totally unable to help you. Your mother would have succeeded, but I just don't know what to do if you don't help me. What can I do to help you? I can sell the farm, to pay for a school. I can break-up with Arianna-”

Everything gets blurry after those words. Varian stares at his father.

He had been waiting for this, since his father brought Arianna and Rapunzel home. He has been waiting for the moment someone would take his feelings in account.

He knows he is right to want them gone. He knows it's logical for them to be away from his home and not to take Mummy's place. He knows this.

But in the old car, that smells winter vegetables and hot dust coming from the heater, Varian feels like an idiot. He feels like he has no right to ask for this. His father has dark circles and he looks old. So old.

He waits for an answer that Varian can't give him.

Because he knows what he wants. And he shouldn't have to say this for everyone to realize how wrong they are.

His eyes burn and he turns his head away, angry, sad and so tired. Some strange pain is blooming in his chest, plumb weighting in his stomach and a ball full of feelings impossible to understand in his throat. He wants to cry and ask for Mummy to come back, but it was no use back then and it would be no use now.

“I will play my part.” he says to the window.

“Varian..”

“But leave me my space. I need my space.”

He can feel that his father is not done. But he doesn't want to talk anymore. Not asking for anything was already a big step, maybe he can have the right to be left alone and to grieve and to be a weird, deceiving idiot in his bedroom, with his books.

Varian is thirteen, more angry than most teenagers and as his father's car moves on the road, making the pile of snow look like a long white untouched line, he accepts that the world is an awful place full of deceiving events.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, well, see the bright side? Froggy made something spectacular today!
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28044648


	15. 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, there ~
> 
> I don't have a lot of thing to say about this chapter, except that violence is not a good way to deal with problems uu

“Oh my Lanta! What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“That 'Nothing' is purple and the size of an apple!” Rapunzel answers after she approaches.

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Can we take care of that 'it' or are we supposed to act like It is really nothing?”

Varian grumbles, a word away from sending her to hell or wherever she would leave him alone. But when he raises his head and his non-hurt eye catches her worried expression, he swallows his insult and nods.

They go to the bathroom, with her yellow light and her variety of little bulbs of white one that Rapunzel and her mother added to see something in the tiny space. Varian sits in the bathtub as she moves his head like some kind of vegetable in a supermarket.

He hisses with pain, his jaw hurts too.

“Sorry... It's not pretty....”

“No kidding” he whispers, acidity burning through his bitterness.

“You still don't want to tell me what happened?” she asks while putting a cold towel on his eye.

She is supposed to put ice in it before, but she apparently doesn't bother. Varian had kept some snow in one of his gloves against it during the bus travel. Still it hurts.

“It's not like you care.”

“... Why do you always have to act like this...”

“I don't know, maybe because you don't know when to quit?”

“What have I done to you Varian? I have never been anything but kind and friendly to you.”

It would be easier to believe if she wasn't putting alcohol on the scratches on his jaw.

“Really? Then why are you here?” he whistles out of anger.

She steps back, a shocked look in her feature, eyes wide open. Her shoulders shake and Varian is hit by remorse before the last word even gets out of his mouth but he can't stop.

He has done his part and more. He has worked on himself to make sure to hurt no one, he has given up a lot, everything that mattered to him and that people have taken, while asking him to be silent because his feelings just don't matter.

He has done it. And he doesn't feel like he belongs in his own house, in the middle of Arianna and his father being happy and Rapunzel being the perfect daughter. He has been patient with everyone at school, even when they were nothing more than dumb idiots and he is so ahead of them and that didn't stop some of them from punching him just because he exists and Varian is so tired to be at fault all the time.

To have no right to exist without being told wrong.

So he shouts. He shouts in the middle of the Bathroom, years and years of frustration and pain and loneliness even if every fiber of his being is telling him that he is wrong, because for once, when he will be punished, it will make sense.

And Varian needs sense.

“YOU CAME HERE OF ALL PLACES AND YOU DESTROYED ALL I KNEW AND IT'S ALWAYS MY FAULT WHEN I'M HURT!!! I'M ALONE ALL THE TIME AND I CAN'T HAVE A MINUTE FOR ME! AND NO ONE CARES! DO YOU UNDERSTAND! NO ONE! AND YOU KNEW AND YET YOU CAME AND IT'S NOT MY FAULT AND IT'S UNFAIR! IT'S SO UNFAIR! It'S UnfAIRit'S UnfaIRit'sUNfairIt'sunfairit'sunfair...”

And maybe, it was all that was needed, because his voice craked and what can cry in him just turned into waters flowing on his cheeks. It hurts.

It's pulsing against a lot of bruises and it's making his knees weak and shaking, but Rapunzel holds him. And it's ridiculous, because they are almost the same size by now and she is putting her bleach hair against his cut.

“I'm sorry... Varian I'm sorry.... When Mom told me about everything, I'm the one who suggested that we moved here... I knew you were missing your mother, I wanted you to stay in the place where you had lived with her... I never knew my dad... It wasn't important for me, to leave the appartement, but you seemed so attached to this home...”

He sniffles in her neck.

“I never thought it would hurt you like this. I thought it would make you happy to be in this home with a sister and someone to take care of you... I always wanted a brother and even before our parents got together, you were like a brother to me... I guess I never imagined that I could have done anything to make you think otherwise...”

“It hurts...” He whispers.

“Yeah, I understand that now...”

“I mean, now. Your hair are brushing against my jaw.”

“Oh!” she takes a step away “Right sorry!”

Varian's shoulders are down, his arms automatically come to wrap his torso.

“I... I shouldn't have...”

“Screamed? Acted like a spoiled baby? Locked yourself in silence for three years? Put a lock on your bedroom door?”

He wants to talk, to defend himself, he has a lot of reasons for acting like he did and they are good reasons he is trying to put into a sentence, but she interrupts him.

“I guess it's my fault too. I should have talked with you... How about we... I'm not saying that we have to be... siblings or even.... Friends” she sighs “But maybe we could try to... talk to each other..? About things that are difficult for us..?”

“ I... I can try, I think, I can.”

“Good. What happened with your face?”

“Rapunzel...” he grumbles

“What? You want the parents to find out before me?”

“It's not like I can hide it from them, anyway.”

“So you admit it's not 'Nothing'?”

She makes quotation marks with her fingers and the only reason why Varian doesn't look at the sky is that it hurts too much.

“I take back all my tries, it's better when we don't talk.”

She put a bandage full of flowers on his jaw and Varian hates her for this.

“Who did this to you?”

“You want their names..?”

“Cassandra will definitely want them when she will learn about all this...”

“You really think?”

“Oh yes.”

Varian doesn't smile. It's just his lips stretching with pain.

“Thank you...”

“Yeah, yeah, I won't cover you, so don't thank me too soon.”

He has lived for fourteen years, and in the Bathroom of his house, with his lashes wet from tears and melted snow, Varian realizes how Life can hurt in so many different manners.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have you read Hesitation? 
> 
> Because Cass can have some, but you, you should really click! (It's rated mature, but I thinks more a PG15 uu)
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28066509


	16. 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, sorry late, I edit this chapter 7 times (at least)
> 
> I hold no bad feelings against Jeremy Jordan or Varian's design, it's just, well you know... Puberty and the occasion to do a little joke... (I'm weak ><)

Rapunzel has a boyfriend.

And because Life wouldn't be happy if Varian's one wasn't stupidly complicated, said boyfriend is Eugene. Eugene, 'I don't know that a multiplication by zero makes zero', Fitzerbert, boyfriend.

They met at Uni. Rapunzel was getting out of her class and Eugene was taking a cocoa at the coffee machine and they met, like in a romantic-comedy -Rapunzel's words-. Anyway, still according to Rapunzel, it's a funny coincidence because Eugene and Cassandra knew each other before and she is sure they are all going to be incredible friends.

Varian doubts it, but he doesn't really have the opportunity to talk in that conversation.

“What do you think about it?”

It's his cue.

“It's gonna be a massacre. Cassandra doesn't have any patience and Eugene is an idiot.”

He gets hit by a cinnamon cookie. Fair.

“This is not something you can say!”

He shrugs. She came in his bedroom with cookies, the moment she got home from uni because she had a wonderful incredible plan for the next day. Varian was lying in his bed when she entered and he didn't move as she sat and started talking about how happy she was.

“You like Eugene!”

“I.... like him more than I used to” he gives up while beheading his gingerbread man. “But the fact is that Cassandra surely knows him for longer than you and I and she has chosen not to like him.”

Rapunzel sighs. Her braid of bleach hair falling with her shoulders.

“I could lock them in here and just wait for them to understand how cool it will be for them to be friends.”

“No”

“Why not?”

“Because the idea is terrible. And because I'm home, tomorrow. And I don't want to see them.”

“Really? Why?”

She truly looks like she doesn't know and Varian is not going to explain.

Rapunzel and him have found a balance in their relation. Something fragile but functional. Rapunzel doesn't push and Varian opens up. There's been screams. There's been weeks without a word and moments of misunderstanding. Varian accepted that he got used to having her around when she left for uni.

Because he started to miss her.

But that doesn't mean he wants to spend an afternoon with her, and her friends.

It's not the best moment of his life. For exemple, he still wears his dental appliance. And there is the problem of his face and the dark and still clear, ridiculous fuzz on his jaw. And his voice. Every letter making the word needed for him to communicate is on a different score with a different key and it's not easy at all, to look clever when you sound like a bad Broadway singer.

So Varian is weird and silent lately. Which is just making him weirder.

He doesn't feel right in his body. He grew too much in a too short notice, his clothes suddenly too tiny for him. New kind of things started happening inside and outside of his body, and he feels trapped in a place that is not his and still belongs to him.

It seems like there is always something not working in him. Like he always has a problem. It's exhausting. And he doesn't want to see perfectly combed hair Eugene, no flaw on my skin and Impossibly perfect Cassandra like this.

It would be awful.

“I want to work on a project and I don't want to have to be social.”

“Oh, come on Varian! It's just an afternoon”

“Yeah, hours that I'm not gonna spend on my project and I need to do so.”

“You are no fun.”

“Hey! I've listened to your babbling about Eugene and Cassandra, I've done my part!”

She throws a pillow this time and Varian think it's ridiculous because he had seen it coming and yet, it still hits him unprepared.

“We barely see each other!”

“We can have the evening, I think my father and your mom are out tomorrow night, we could watch a movie?”

“They are staying here.”

“What?!”

“They are staying here for the night. Cassandra hasn't seen snow in two years so I thought that a week-end would be a good idea...”

“I hate you so much.” Varian says without even having to think the words.

“Why this time?” Rapunzel asks with a calm -used- tone.

“Because.... because.... I don't want to see anyone. Come on Raps, I've spent my week with people, I just want a week-end free of human presence and alone. Is it too much to ask for..?”

She eats a cookie.

“Okay, I will pretend that you are not here so Cassandra won't hear your awful voice or see your acne!”

“I don't have acne!”

“Funny how you don't comment the rest of my sentence.”

He blushes. And Rapunzel smiles.

“I hate you.”

Varian is about to spend two days hiding in his bedroom and Life is an awful place -but he is fifteen, so it's totally logical.-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, have you read Adi's work? You should.
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28068633


	17. 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I love this chapter (again) because Varian is nothing if not a Drama-queen and he swears with Chemist's names and I think it's kinda cute..? ><
> 
> (She's not here this time, but, we are close to the end, so keep your eyes opens for the next chapters ~)

He sneezes for the thousandth time in an hour, shaking from cold under his blanket.

He is not sick. He is dying.

And he doesn't care about the fact that others call this “just a cold.”

It's not.

He shouldn't have been outside without a scarf, clearing the path between the front door and the gate of the garden, two days ago. He was just unable to find anything that was his and there was no way, he'd use his mother's one. But it's unfair that spending two hours in the snow results in his brain leaking in his skull and the fact that he keeps blowing some neuronal soup out of his nose.

His ideas are blurry, and strange, full of clouds made of germs.

“Varian? Can I come in?”

He grumbles, it's no use to talk, every time he makes a sound, it reverberates in his whole body, coming from his mouth, resonating in his nose and tickling all the way to his toes.

“I made you some hot lemon water...” Arianna explains.

She carries a cup that smells hot and walks in the direction of his bed, puts the mug on his bedside table.

“Thake you” he replies.

Worst. Idea. Ever.

“You nt at wolk?”

“I took my day off to make sure you'll be okay. How do you feel..?”

“Tellable.”

She puts a fresh hand on his forehead, brushing feverish strips of hair out of the way. Varian is freezing cold, but this is the most pleasing feeling in his day.

“You should rest, even a little. How is your throat..?”

Varian sneezes again, his whole body folds on itself. He's sure he hurt his head on his knees in the process. His muscles feel sore and the room is spinning too fast.

“Bu'ning, cn't brif”

“Anything else?”

“Sno'flaks in by I's”

She purses her lips and Varian doesn't know if it's because she concentrates to understand what he is trying to say, or if it's because she is taking his temperature.

“It's lower than yesterday.”

Varian blinks, the information ringing a glued bell in his gelatinous brain. It takes him a shameful amount of time to understand what she just said.

“Relly?”

He knew it! He's more sick than what people pretend!

“Yes” she laughs in this tender way she always does.

Varian has grown used to her.

Strangely, the only person he's still angry at is his father. But with Rapunzel being more acceptable, Arianna became more... Tolerable. He sees her qualities. She will never be his mother. Or even Step-mother. And she will never replace Mummy, but she is someone he can accept to cohabit with.

After three years of therapy and a lot of screams and as much time being angry.

It takes what it takes.

“Your father takes this too lightly... It's not dramatic, but it's better to be careful.”

She takes the cup and holds it for him to drink. It's painful to swallow. Lemon acidity and hurt throat fight and Varian is the one losing the battle.

He coughs the pain away, only making it worst and with a weezling respiration, lies back down.

“Not the most pleasing medicine, but efficient.”

He doesn't bother to answer. It's too much for his curent state. He just sniffles when he tries to breath and closes his eyes.

“I'll let you rest.”

“Noh... I... I downt whant to be 'lone...”

It's pathetic to ask her to stay, but he feels pathetic, cuddling himself under this too thin blanket in his freeze body.

“Oh... Do you... Do you want me to read something?”

He nods. And his brain swings from one point of his skull to the other, smashing what was still complete in it, in the process.

A cold? Marie Curie! It must be the intellectual plague.

She understands anyways and seizes the book next to the lemon-water-bleach-effect cup. Her wrist smells lilac and sugar. He can't smell it in his state, he just feels it, out of habits.

She has a pleasing voice, almost singing in a lullaby tone when she articulates words of chemistry. She doesn't sound like those people who stutters on definitions, like they would stumble on square roots.

It's a comforting tone.

Varian gives up on conscious with her voice in the back of his sick mind.

He is sixteen and sick, that opens a door in him. A little one he closed out of fear years ago, and maybe, just maybe, Arianna is crossing it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writer's note: Writing someone with a cold in a langage that isn't yours is so complicated xD
> 
> You know who doesn't have anything Plague related? Froggy's Varian ~
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28109511


	18. 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi = )
> 
> I have nothing to say this time (appart that you may see a reference to Queen for a day -In the dark, in your back, 300kilometers away, and with your eyes closes?- *writer who tried something, she is probably the only one to see having a moment of panic xD*)
> 
> Anyways, out of rambling about this story, I just wanted to wish you the best for the 24hours separating us from tomorrow (the rest of your life too but it seems like a big wish for a little chapter ><) and remind you to take care of yourself =)

Varian ignores every noise and ducks a little to avoid a snowball.

He has made himself a place on a bench, put a plastic bag on it and sat with a book, dropping looks to check the health of every opponent in the Snow-ballfight, from time to time.

Eugene is losing, hard. As Lance is making a Snowman and occasionally throwing snow at his best friend, Rapunzel plays a strange tag-game while shooting him and Cassandra aims for dear life.

Varian had tried not to look at her like a desperate boy. But he just can't help it. His eyes move on their own in her direction.

Time is in love with her.

She's more beautiful every moment he gets a chance to look at her. It's unfair. He, on his part, looks like a disjointed puppet when she looks like a magic being, out-shadowing the beauty of the Universe.

“Duck!” A voice shouts and Varian and the only two reflexes of his life hide in the collar of his coat to avoid the white projectile.

“Oh my! You're okay?” Cassandras asks when she's by his side.

He blushes, a bad stupid habit that seems to come from nowhere lately and makes him react strangely at everything.

“I am...” he whispers to make sure to control his voice.

“Fitzerjerk... You idiotic Stormtrooper!” she hisses in Eugene's direction.

Rapunzel appears at his side.

“I'm really okay.”

“Oh, I know, I just put myself out of danger. Those two, when they fight, it can be dangerous.”

Eugene, currently eating a mouthful of Snow, is not going to say otherwise.

“You know why they can't deal with each other?”

“Oh, Eugene finds Cassandra pretentious and cold and Cassandra thinks Eugene is a selfish-immature-egocentrical-lazy-idiot.”

“She has a way with words.”

Rapunzel chuckles by his side and Varian hides a smirk.

“I think she does.”

“She is gonna kill him...”

“No, if Eugene still screams, that means he is alive, trust my experience.”

There is something in the way she looks at them, with a tenderness full of affection and the ghost of a smile on the curve of her lips that almost makes Varian jealous.

“Why did you invite me?”

“What?” she asks

“Here... Why did you invite me..? I'm not really part of the crew or anything.”

“Because it makes me happy... And because it makes Cassandra happy. And I want her to have good memories to remember when she leaves.”

“.... What?”

“She's going on mission next week. Six months.”

Varian is showered by a cold guillotine of fear. He knew, that this day would happen, Cassandra joined the army years ago and she has been sent away already, from time to time. Varian is always the last to know.

And the first to fear.

“I guess we don't know anything else?”

“Nope.”

“So you organised her a day out in the snow for her to try her hand on Eugene and Lance?”

“They have the kind of relationship we used to have three years ago.”

“I hated you and wished for you to disappear.”

“But still liked me.”

Varian is not going to play this game one more time. They've done that already and Rapunzel doesn't understand that he was truly hating her and everything she represented.

“You were just an idiotic teenager unable to realize it.”

“Still cleverer than you.” Varian informs her as he pretends to read again.

In front of them, Cassandra is running after Lance and Eugene running after her and nothing makes sense. Varian looks at her and her hand full of snow. Her black curls are wet, heavier and less defined. It's surely the reason why she wants to end Eugene's life.

“She will be okay” Rapunzel says. “I know she will, don't worry.”

“I'll always worry... She's Cassie.”

“Are you in love with her?”

Varian jerks in surprise, a second of panick stopping him from reacting otherwise. It's a question he stopped asking himself.

Is he in love with Cassandra? He can't answer.

Yes and no. She is so important to him, even if he barely sees her, even if he doesn't have any way to talk to her when she is not with Rapunzel. He misses her, when he is happy and he wants to share it with someone, or when he is sad and wants to have a friend to hold. When he just exists and she is not by his side.

But can he say that he is in love with her when he feels happy to have some other girls smiling at him, or he feels moved by a compliment, or just stupid in front of a beautiful girl?

Are you in love, when you feel like every fiber of your being is falling appart when someone is not with you and forget them when you've been smiled to?

“It doesn't matter, does it? She is leaving.”

It's a Snowy day, and Cassandra is made of broken snowflakes and fragile life, when Varian is an unknown answer to a mysterious question and seventeen years old.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, have you seen Froggy's work? I'm sure she will be happy to have a little word from you ~
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28128489


	19. 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there ~
> 
> I hope you had/have/will have a good day ~
> 
> Ps: I don't really know anything about Varian and the 7 kingdoms, just thought it could be cool, but I might have misread or misinterpreted things, feel free to tell me (on a general not, feel free to point mistake and all uu)

College is the best thing that happened in Varian's life.

Classes are fascinating. He can actually work on interesting subjects. The library is incredible. And he makes friends.

Having friends of his own is new, and exciting and so wonderful that he's not sure of how he is supposed to handle it. Rapunzel said to just “be yourself” and Eugene to “play it cool”, Lance recomanded to “pay for food. Free food is always attractive”.

Varian is skeptical.

Still, since school started, it's been working. He stays on campus for twelve hours, eight to eight, shares his lunch with them and take a moment for a coffee. On Saturdays, they take the afternoon to Roleplay.

They are currently stuck in a scary library.

Nuru, who plays a princess, suggests that, with Christmas coming their way, they visit the market instead of playing on the precise day Varian the Alchemist might unravel the secret of Hugo the thief and they are supposed to know if the explosion of the pyro-scientist Yong had badly hurt them or not.

Which is the main reason why, they are shopping gifts under a cold grey sky crying snow.

With the impression that their toes are turning into ice cubes.

“How are you not cold?” Nuru asks under her three layers of scarf.

“Peasant composition, I'm used to the cold.”

He might be showing-off a little, because he is not that warm, but it feels good to look more in control than Hugo for once. Nuru looks at him like he is some strange creature and shrugs.

“You're gonna shop for your sister?”

“We make handmade gift, it's funnier”

He's broke. And Rapunzel is so easily bored... it's less complicated to just create a whole system to light-up lanterns safely than to buy her anything. And Rapunzel loves making awful cozy sweaters and too colorful paintings.

It's a good deal.

“It's cute.”

“What is cute?”

“Your relationship with her.”

“Yeah, well... Hm... Took time.”

Rapunzel loves to remind him about his past insufferable behavior when she needs a favor “Come on, one movie, for all the times you never talked to me!”, “I can't shop for Eugene without a man by my side to show me how the clothes will fall... See it as a reward for all the moments I stayed calm?” “You can take care of my ficus for two weeks... I took care of you even when you pretended you hated me...” A teenage-hood full of anger is changing into a lifetime of contrition acts.

She always have a Cheshire cat smile when she does that. Varian thinks that it's how siblings work when they are blood related. And that it's how their whole relationship was supposed to work from the start.

It eases the regrets.

“And you? Who are you shopping for?”

“My family. We are a lot so I look for little not too expensive things.”

“Can we have a pause for churros or are we supposed to starve..?” Hugo drawls behind them.

Knowing Hugo sooner would probably have changed everything in Varian's life. Sometimes, he is relieved it didn't happen.

“Do you always complain?”

“Only when things are less perfect than me.” he answers Varian with a tricky smile.

Varian is about to answer something clever but he feels a cold finger just under the short hair of his neck.

“What-”

“Hello, nerd.”

Cassandra is smiling to him, brighter than ever in the middle of the make-up path. She has painted her lips and it's the first thing that hits his eyes when he looks at her.

“Cassie...” he lets slip in one breath.

She looks so pretty. She is so, so pretty.

“Long time no see.”

He can't find an answer, he wants to hold her in his arms “When did you came back? Why haven't you called?” is all he wants to ask, but it would be so strange. She never talks to him, she always calls Rapunzel and Rapunzel tells him.

She should have told him.

“Varian?” Yong asks behind him.

Varian jerks and realizes the world around them.

“Right! Cassandra, my friends Nuru, Yong and Hugo. Everyone, Cassandra.”

“Truly enchanted...” Hugo says before kissing Cassandra's hand.

She raises an eyebrow in Varian's direction, clearly unimpressed and Varian smiles out of victory.

“You are shopping for your family?”

Cassandra's question is open, for everyone, but Varian cuts the conversation to put in light the interesting subject.

“And you? You are here for long?”

“I have a month, but not really here, military life is complicated. In fact, I was looking for the perfect family in law first Christmas gift, do you have an idea?”

It wouldn't have hurt that much, if she had punched him. He stares at her, every pieces of him cold and crumbling as the words make sense. “Family-in-law” “Christmas”

Cassandra is in a love relationship.

“I... I don't know.”

“Yeah Varian here, doesn't have a lot of experience, but I can help you” announces Hugo.

Varian looks at him, at the wink he gave a confused Cassandra and everything is so far from him. Everything is happening in another dimension.

“Let me show you the perfect counter for a perfect gift!”

The other boy takes Cassandra by the arm, but not before he squeezes Varian's hand, and leads the band to a little, ridiculously decorated part of the market and talks non-stop.

Cassandra is probably hating him but Varian can't be sure.

He is eighteen, full of ideas failing him. And a broken heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hm...
> 
> Froggy's work today is rated as mature and all, but it's honestly a PG15 -and I'm being cautious- so feel free to have actual Cassarian ~
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147533


	20. 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi ~
> 
> I know I answer every review and I will continue to do it, but, I might not comment some things from now on until chapter N because... meh (I will be more frustrated than you. Except for those of you tired of seeing my explanations when they already spend ten minutes reading and kindly said they like my work >< -Sorry? It's hard to control myself when I start talking? ><-)
> 
> Anyway, I wish you all a good moment with Varian (and good moments out of this story too ~)

“I swear” Varian starts “It's not my fault.”

On the other side of the phone, his father sighs.

“What is it this time?” the severe voice asks.

“I kinda missed my train....”

“How did you-”

“Lab work” He cuts him before he can say another word. “I was working and I forgot to check my watch and I missed my train...”

“So you'll come tomorrow?”

“Unless you are ready to eat pasta for a year just for me to have a last chance place in an overbooked train, I think I won't be home for the holidays.”

It's unfortunate. Because it's the first Christmas he would have actually wanted to celebrate in years.

“Varian...”

“I know... I'm sorry. I truly am, you have no idea how much I've run to catch that train. I was really looking forward to be with you all. I've picked gifts and all...”

“You are really telling the truth..?”

“You want me to send a selfie of my exhausted, red from effort face in front of the empty railway to Rapunzel as a proof?”

Things have changed for him and his dad when he left home. It has been a good new beginning, in fact. He was away from his family house, had a flat, met friends, left teenage-hood...

Got heart broken.

He started talking.

It was easier to recognize that he missed people that were actually, physically away.

He and his father started walking in the forest. And talking about Varian's mother.  He was taught about things he forgot, hidden secrets, missed truths. They talked about Arianna's caring personality and Quirin's fears and how love can let you hurt people for the best of reasons.  It changed everything.

“No, I'll believe that you've missed your train.”

“Dad. I'm really sorry, okay? I'll search for a solution, but I can't promise to be here for Christmas. I really don't think I will be able to make it.”

He is exhausted. He has been rushing all week to be on time and it's a failure. And his father probably thinks he missed his train on purpose.

“I know that you are disappointed. I am disappointed too. I... If you think about it from my perspective, you will understand that I'm gonna be alone, for Christmas in a city where I don't really know anyone and it's not as poetic as it seems. I would have no reason to lie about this.”

He doesn't want to explain anything. He doesn't want to justify himself to his father.

He just missed his train because he works too much. Because he got an opportunity to study out of Corona. Because he works hard to forget that Cassandra is in love with someone.

And that someone is not him.

It was really stupid to realize how much he was waiting for her, when she was already gone. How old is she now? Rapunzel and Eugene talk about marriage and future. What if Cassandra is doing the same?

It was dumb. It was really dumb, to believe that something was possible between the two of them. He doesn't even have her phone number.

They have barely talked in years.

Still. Cassandra is his Cassie.

But Cassandra isn't his.

“I'm gonna look for a way to be there okay? I'm gonna go to my flat, have a coffee and look for a way to come home... I'm sorry.”

“It's not Christmas, Varian. Not just Christmas. It's that I'm worried for you.”

“There is no reason... I'm okay. A lot of things to do.”

“Yeah, it's the problem. You never talk about anything else than work... Don't you have friends or... A special someone?”

Varian could send him to hell. But he has learnt better.

“I have some people I share a drink with from time to time...”

Uni teachers and specialists in conferences.

“Listen Dad, it's cold in the station, and I really need to look for another solution, so... I call you back when I know more, okay?”

“... Take care son.”

“Always.”

It's a long walk from the station to his flat. The minutes of sleep he got during the last weeks are waiting for the missed hours to join them. He makes himself a coffee to hold a little bit longer. His brain slows from exhaustion and disappointment.

Everything is over expensive. Or too late.

His dad is going to kill him.

The special ringtone he picked for Rapunzel sings in the room that makes his living space and he picks up.

“I'm sorry, I promise it wasn't on purpose.”

“I may have a solution.” Rapunzel's says

They don't bother for basic curtsy anymore. Sometimes, Rapunzel just starts the conversation with “Are you still alive?” and Varian starts complaining the moment she answers the phone.

“Something that doesn't coast my heart?”

“Your what?”

Fair.

“Cassandra is coming back and she is taking a road, twenty minutes away from your place. She can pick you.”

Cassandra.... picking him. Six hours of travel in a car. With Cassandra.

“I...”

Christmas with his family or alone? Six hours of torture in a car with Cassandra or hours of sleep?

“When will she be here?”

They exchange informations, deal with phone numbers, address and car. Varian thinks about dying when her old red scrap heap pulls over.

“Someone missed his train?” she asks when she's out of the cabin.

“Yeah, kind of.... Thank you for...”

“You look exhausted...”

“Yeah, kind of...”

She stops him from going in, after he put his bag in the trunk.

“You're okay...?”

She holds his wrist. Three layers of fabric between their skins, green eyes overwhelmed with worry. It's too late, he remembers.

She is not his.

“I'm okay.”

He gets in, half falling on the backseats. She is carpooling.

“Everyone, Varian. Varian, Faith and Helen.”

She glances at him in her interior mirror and Varian smiles. Cassandra too.

It takes ten hours for them to arrive in Corona because it started snowing and they got stuck in traffic. Cassandra drives everyone home, in a light chatting ambiance.

Varian is going to turn nineteen in a few months but for now, he is still eighteen and he holds the phone number of his first kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think you already know that there is no link for today (not that there is no story coming from Froggy, but it's not post yet) So...
> 
> https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/christmas/50-jokes-christmas-2020-best-funny-festive-one-liners-riddles-and-puns-make-you-laugh-year-3044783
> 
> It's a link for Christmas jokes... it's not as good as a Cassarian's story but... Meh?


	21. 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there ~
> 
> Day 20, time is flying QQ
> 
> I hope you are okay and that you're gonna enjoy this moment with Varian ~

Varian falls for the one-hundred-and-thirty-sixth time in an hour

Which means he fell more than twice in a minute.

Which hurts.

Body and Ego.

Equally.

“You're okay?”

“Never been better.”

He doesn't know why he has accepted to come. But here he is. And it's painful.

“You know that it's more difficult to ski when you are sitting on the snow?”

“Really? That explains everything.” he jokes

He can't keep his balance. He just failed to stay on his feet -ski- every time he started sliding on the snow. It has to be about internal balance. Something like bike and all. Finding the perfect poise between the Force and the Dark-side.

“You should go and enjoy yourself while I create a whole new way to ski.”

“You're sure?”

“Absolutely. You are too beautiful, I can't stay concentrated.”

She chuckles and bends to kiss him. He regrets his gloves when he can't lose his fingers in her hair.

“I see you in the coffee-shop down the slope.”

“Can't wait.”

She smiles, moves and all he can see is the back of her green suit as she skis away.

She is going to find him in an hour, his body just two inches away from this spot, but his ego shattered in a million more pieces. He knows, because there are papers on this and studies and a lot of scientific proofs, that love makes you dumb. But this is beyond stupidity.

Because there is no way he can get down this ski slope with no broken bones.

“Do you need help?” someone asks.

'Someone' is a ski instructor in a bright red suit, followed by a line of children. The oldest must be seven.

Varian will save his ego before his bones.

“It's okay, I'm about to move. Just checking my.... knee.”

“You're sure?”

“Absolutely. Thanks.”

They are in a perfect line, sliding in a perfect synchronization, at a perfect rhythm.

Varian is perfectly done.

He takes off his skis and walks down the slope. He, unsurprisingly, hurts his ankle in the process.

She loves snow sports. She loves snow, and sports, but Varian is going to find an excuse to stay in the flat for the rest of the weekend.

She talked about how it could be good for them to have some time away from Corona and everyone they know. She talked about how she wanted to get away from whispers and just give their relation some time to blossom. She explained, her head on his shoulder how she needed to get out of their city.

And Varian, stupidly in love just accepted. They could have left for anything, really -preferably something that wouldn't have coast him his ankle or his self-estime – but they've just ended-up in a ski station. Because Varian is a genius about chemistry but stupid when it's about hormonal chemistry reactions.

She kissed him on his birthday. She found some time to be with him and they spent the whole day together. It was full of things Varian always wanted. Full of emotions he longed to feel. He just made his wish, on a little candle she put on a cupcake because “not really my thing, sugar.” and she bent, and kissed him.

It changed the world. It made everything new and prettier.

He is at a table before her -because she is surely skiing again- and Varian orders a coffee with a feeling of relief he never thought possible.

She is not difficult to spot. She is too pretty to miss.

She stops by his side, a wide smile on her face.

“You've made it.”

“Of course”

She takes the seat, in front of his and Varian can see, from the corner of his eyes, some men backing off.

He smirks while she raises an eyebrow.

“What have you spotted..?”

“Disappointment.”

“You are horrible.” she escapes with a laugh.

Varian moves a little, kisses her cheek.

“I just found comfort in spite of my epic failure in their tragic instant of realization.”

“And what are they realizing, exactly?”

“That we are a pair, Helen.”

She moves a lock of hair out of his face before bending to kiss him.

Varian is happy to have taken his gloves off, to put his fingers in her blond hair. It's always so soft.

He's been nineteen for a few weeks, it's the beginning of his twentieth year of existence and he is having a perfectly normal life.

For once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise..? >>
> 
> Have you read day 19 of the Advent Calendar? ~
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28174530


	22. 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there ~
> 
> I have a ton of things to say, but none will be more interesting for you, than this one: GOOOOOOOD NEWS! SHE'S BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!
> 
> Also, I hope you are feeling good ~

“Do we know more?”

“Not yet” Varian says for the thousandth time.

Lance has been walking in circles for an hour. Varian gives up on the idea to make him sit. Arianna, close to the phone, regularly glances at it, praying for a call, and his father stopped trying to make her feel better after five useless comforting smiles.

Cassandra puts a tray with hot tea on the coffee table before sitting on the couch with her mug.

They were in Varian's father house, having one last evening with Rapunzel and Eugene in a not parent-mode when Rapunzel went into labor. It was the beginning and Eugene drove her to hospital and they knew that it could happen but it was still surprising.

Giving birth is something that can take a lot of time, but it's been four hours and everyone gets worried at some point.

“You didn't take sugar?” Lance asks, still moving with his hot cup.

“I'll get some” Varian says to leave the room.

Rapunzel announced her pregnancy five months, two weeks and six days ago. She had her hand on her stomach, shining engagement ring and wedding band linked and she said “We are going to be more soon”

It was the moment Varian felt the world changing.

“Thank you Varian.”

He was happy, of course he was. But he was about to be an uncle, and he realized that it meant a lot of things. Future, desire, family and responsibility. Questions about projects and situations in some years.

He loves his classes, he loves his work with Hugo, but when he questions his Future, he doesn't know if he is taking the right direction. He doesn't know if the things he has to give up to be part of this world, are things he wants to let go.

There is Helen, nice, and sweet, who wants them to live together, to share a flat and to do more as a couple. Helen who talks about projects. But he doesn't want anything else than what he has now. And something in the way she wants things to be more important and he is fine with the actual situation, dug a line between them.

And he starts wondering if he is in love with her or with the idea of a relationship.

“Hey, I'm here 'cause Arianna asked for some milk?” Cassandra announces behind him.

“Oh, yeah, sorry.”

Varian moves for her to use the fridge. He doesn't feel like going back in the living-room, waiting for the moment the world changes without anyone but them knowing.

“... I'm not Rapunzel but... You look like someone who needs to talk.”

“It's that obvious?”

“For me, yes. I baby-sitted you, I've learned the signs.”

“I've changed since then.”

“It's true.”

She smiles a little, her head raises to looks at him. It's exaggerated, but Varian thinks of it as something almost cute. She is closer to him now that she's been all day and Varian catches the little signs of fatigue on her face.

“You need to talk too.”

“Not really.”

“It wasn't a question.”

Her eyebrows move up, the corner of her mouth gets sharper.

“Okay, tell me first, and I'll see if it deserves for me to share my life with you.”

“Wow, I guess I'll have a lot of stories to invent for you to start opening up to me.”

“So many words, and no informations yet.” she comments before giving a friendly poking with her elbow in his stomach.

He chuckles, goes to the cupboard where the sugar is stored.

“I'm having personal life problems, I think...”

“Your girlfriend?”

“Hm... And the rest too... I don't know, I just feel... Lost.”

“What kind of lost..?” she asks.

“Lost enough not to know.”

“Oh ! That kind.”

Varian can hear the sound of a chair moving on the floor and Cassandra sits. Sugar and milk are going to wait.

“How old are you, now?”

“Twenty-one. Thank you for your attention on the matter...”

Rolling eyes. She always does that. Varian leans against the counter. The situation seems quite strange, different from the one they used to know. It's maybe because she was the one against the counter, and he was the one with milk, sitting at the table.

“What are you scared of, then? With your whole life ahead of you?”

“I don't feel like my life is ahead of me, I just feel like... I don't know. I have no plan. I'm walking in no direction. I have so many things and in the mean time none and it's just. Overwhelming and I don't know. There are days that are suffocating and- I don't know. I'm lost.”

“Why?”

“Because... I need to have a job and to be responsible and to do things because it's what people expect from me and- I don't know. I don't comprehend Life.”

“I broke up with my boyfriend.”

“What?”

“A month ago, I broke up with him. I just realized I put myself in a wrong situation for the wrong reasons. Pressure from people, fear of being alone, parents expectations, problems with my own image and more, surely. When Rapunzel announced her pregnancy, it was just clear for me that the whole thing wasn't gonna last long.”

“Why are you saying this to me?”

“Because you are young and it's easy to feel like you have to do what people expect from you, or at least what you think they expect from you. But don't put yourself in a box. You have to ask yourself 'What do I want?'”

He looks at her, at her freshly cut black curls -he knows because the tips aren't too thin- She wears a jumper that leaves one of her shoulder bare. It's full of little snowflakes. Varian never thought it was her style. She looks different, and still like her. She looks like this comforting girl that held him when he was young and panicking. The one who put a fluffy blanket on him in her bed because he had run away from home.

Somehow, she just make things easier.

“How do you always do this..?”

“Do what?”

“Say what I need to hear.”

“Because it's exactly what I would have wanted people to tell me in the same situation.”

She stands, picks the milk.

“I'm sure you will be able to make your own box, Varian.”

“I hope so...” he says following her back in the living room.

“Talking about boxes, you forgot the one with the sugar in it, genius.”

He shyly comes back to the kitchen to grab it.

In two hours and fifty-four minutes, Eugene is going to call to cry that he is a father and that everything is okay for the four of them. In three days, Varian is going to turn twenty-two, and in some time, he is going to find the courage to do a hole for himself in the box of life.

Because a red square can go in the box by the blue circle hole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're like me and lately, you are not really organised -Christmas is killing me- you might have missed the last entries on the "Other" Advent Calendar <\- I need a clever person with a name for this project 4day before Christmas, please ><
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28195188
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28217298/chapters/69144783


	23. 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there ~
> 
> Lately I count the day with Varian's adventure, which means that I program my life like this "Yeah, okay so we buy the gift on the day Varian is sick... Huh, yeah, wednesday. It's what I said, didn't I..?" <-My family and friends better know what is happening in this story because this is getting complicated.
> 
> I already said this, but apparently this is getting incredibly complicated and I'm really not sure if I will be able to put chapter 25 at the same hours I've posted the others so.... You might have it later than usual >< Sorry...
> 
> I hope you're okay, and let's have this chapter ~

“What do you see from your window?”

“The street.” Varian says. “Where are you?”

“My bed.”

It's a bad habit of theirs, to just ask random stupid questions when the other picks up. It came to Cassandra one night late in the conversation “We talk three hours a day, Varian, I think that during the first one, we are capable to tell if the other one is okay” “You're right and 'hello' is so out-of-date.” She had chuckled and Varian had felt proud for the rest of the week.

They started calling each other two weeks after the birth of the twins. Cassandra called for news, he called for her.

He helped her move out of her old flat, she helped him move out of his head. It was a cool deal.

“Where are you?” She asks too.

“Shopping for dinner.”

“You mean picking a pizza two meters away from your flat.”

“... Maybe.”

It happens a shameful number of times in a month. Varian hates cooking and he has that awful habit to order food every time he can, no time lost in the kitchen, no dishes and no problems. Until he doesn't have any money on his bank account and he has to eat self-made pasta and rice. The world is a difficult place for the poor.

“You are unbelievable.”

“I'll take this as a compliment.”

“It wasn't”

“I beg to differ.”

She sighs, he smiles.

At first, they were calling three times a week. And then Varian broke-up with Helen. It wasn't a painful decision, it was just made difficult by all the good times they had shared, the happy memories and the affection Varian still had for her. But every time he heard the voice of Cassandra on the other side of the phone, it made the whole situation easier to deal with.

And that was when the problem began. Because he is slowly, unquestionably, desperately, falling for her. And he doesn't have any desire to stop this.

“And how is the street?”

“Tricky. It snowed all night yesterday. It's awful and slippery and cold.”

“Sounds like a family-in-law dinner to me.”

He laughs and makes a careful step on the pavement.

“And you, what do you see from your window?”

“Nothing, just, the night on Corona and a strangely full parking.”

“Wow! What a view! I understand you asked for mine.”

She makes that annoyed noise, no one else but her can do, something a little judgmental, a lot fond that pushes Varian deeper in his awe.

“You are an idiot.”

“You used to call me genius!”

“And then you became an idiot teenager!”

“Lets just say that hormones and unhealthy grieving are not the best cocktail.”

He loses a minute in front of the door of his block to look for his key. Two floors of stairs later and a long explanation about how puberty made him look like an angry kitten, Varian can finally bite his slice of pizza.

He's been waiting for a call from Cassandra and a dinner all day.

“I can hear you chewing, that's gross.”

“I forgot to eat during lunch. Too much work.”

“You are irresponsible.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He says when walking to grab a bottle of water. And then he realizes the red cross on the calendar in front of him. “Cass?”

“Hm?”

“Weren't you suppose to be out of reach tonight?”

“... Yeah, kind of.”

She talked about something, a place she had to be.

Work stuff.

She talks a lot about the army. She loves her job, truly loves her job. She told Varian that it was her dream to join since she was eight. “Somehow, it feels like the only thing I can trust myself with, you know?” It's fun, because everything she says about it is encrypted, and it's like half of their conversations is in a foreign language. But it's fascinating to hear.

Because Cassandra's voice changes every time she talks about it.

“What happened?”

“It didn't go quite as planned.”

“Cassie..? What happened?”

The silence answers, something deep and heavy. He waits for her to say something. It seems like it takes hours.

“What do you see, from your window?”

It's the question he asked her, when she moved out. They placed her bed in a little room with a roof window. He had spent the day driving back from Corona to the city he studies in. The moment he got in his flat, he called her. “What do you see from your window?”

It's easier to feel like they are not appart if they share the same view. It's the moment he realizes.

She can't see anything but the night sky, from her bed.

“Cassie... Where are you?”

“In my bed.”

“And where is that bed?”

It's cold outside. It's cold inside too. It's cold in every part of him that links informations together. Her father lives in a little house and he knows that she can't see a parking from her bedroom because they picked furniture for her new flat from the room.

She can see a parking from another flat in Corona. But the bed wouldn't be hers.

Or she can be in what is called her bed, in a place with a parking lot.

“Tell me you moved in with someone.” he begs.

He can live with what it means. She exchanges her schedule with someone else to have a romantic day in her new flat with her new love-interest and she calls Varian because... because she hates the view from the window.

“You've always been so clever.”

Or she is in the only place in all Corona with beds and a car park.

She is in Hospital.

“I'm on my way.” he announces.

“No. You'll stay where you are. I mean it Varian.”

“I'm not staying here if you are in-”

“You hate this place. Don't lie, I know. You cried more about being here, than about your wrist when you sprained it.”

It's true, he hates it. He hates the place, the smell, the light, the walls color and the idea of it.

“Cassie... I can't-”

“I don't want to see you here. Am I clear?”

“Please...”

There is a broken anger in her voice and Varian knows it so well.

“I can't have you here. I just can't, okay? You are... You are my safe place. You are... Everything that is still normal in my life. I-... Please don't come. Act as if you don't know. Act like it's a normal day, and I'm coming home from work and I only see the wall of the building in front of my kitchen...”

Varian puts the phone away. Takes a big breath, and another, fight the balls of pain in his throat and the burning water in his eyes and then, talks again.

“The snow is turning muddy, it's already brown and black some places.”

“Really?”

“Yeah... It's not like yesterday... It's...”

He keeps pretending, until she starts sobbing and hangs up. And then, with a blurry vision and the grabs of fear scratching him, he calls Rapunzel.

It's something that happened the night before, Cassandra had a problem to her right arm. She couldn't feel it. She couldn't move it.

And no one knows what is happening but it's turning black.

It takes four days to Varian, all the begging he can do and all the courage he never knew he had to find what is possibly happening to her. He didn't rest out of fear, he barely ate between two memories of his mother in the same hospital and tears crisis, begging for “Mercy, please, not again.”

She didn't reply to phonecalls and he stopped trying at some point.

He found the solution, he found the truth.

But it's too late for her forearm.

Varian is twenty two and when Rapunzel calls, with more tears than explanations and the result of a surgical procedure, he understands that it's the moment he's gonna have to be strong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, well, okay, not... But...Hm... Merry future Christmas? Can I offer you a link to the last OS of Froggy as an apologize?
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28238001


	24. 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey ~
> 
> I hope this day is a good one in your life ~
> 
> (And I leave now uu)

She screamed, she shouted, she stayed silent. She left, she came back.

She was lost.

During the six months she spent in a special house learning how to live with only one arm, things got complicated and blurry.

Varian acted as if nothing happened at first. It was hard for him, to pretend when she was high on pain killers. It was hard for her to pretend when the pain was killing her.

After a month, it was impossible to play as if nothing was real. He contacted an ancient classmate, robotic specialist and asked questions. They created the perfect artificial arm.

Cassandra screamed on the phone when he told her about a prosthetic.

On his first holiday, he left his flat, took a bedroom in an hotel and spent a week visiting her. When she spotted him, she became crazy. She screamed for twenty minutes and texted him, thirty-six messages, at three in the morning, in caps-lock, to tell him to go. He came back the day after. The last day, she burst into tears, it felt like things started again, in a slightly different way.

He understood things, slowly.

How much she was holding on to things that couldn't be anymore. How much she was scared.

He started acting like he wished someone had when he was a child. He told the truth and just stood by her.

For the first time he finally realized how hard it must have been for his Dad. For his Grand-Dad, for anyone who was desperate to help, when he just stopped talking.

Cassandra hadn't really stopped. She had just silenced some of her thoughts. So, he learned her silence. He learned her fears. He discovered her difficulties and her hard times. He wrote in his memory, all the things that made her laugh and she rewarded with comments packed in a soft voice.

He waited for her to be ready as he walked in her direction and somewhere, along the way, he found her. Not the one she shows to the world, not the one she shows herself or the one he imagines. Another Cassandra. All of them and none.

And it's the most incredible thing that ever happened to him.

“Okay, I need to understand. How did your grandparents met?” Cassandra asks.

“Really? Now?”

“Do you see anything else to talk about?”

It's nine, there is no bus anymore. It's so cold they are walking through an air sharped as a dagger.

They were delivering an order to Corona's Museum and on their way back, the truck run out of gasoline. Varian forgot about how his Grand-Dad always forgets to check.

It took them half an hour to find where to put the white too visible van and when it was done, they were doomed to a fifty minutes walk.

“He talks all the time about Grand-Ma Mary, huh?”

When Cassandra was finally out, free and with a whole new life to live, Grand-Dad Xavier employed her in his shop. He didn't ask if it would please her, he's just done it “The time she has another plan, the girl has always been the kind to be busy.”

Varian didn't really comment the whole thing. His grand-father was lonely and Cassandra couldn't be left alone. Cool deal.

“Yep but I don't know how they met.”

“He's not gonna tell you.”

“Why?”

“Because he never truly gives the beginning or the ending of this story.”

Varian stops and turns to her.

“Love has no beginning nor ending. It just appears in your life and stays with you”

“Really?” she asks, one eyebrow raised.

“It's how he explains that it's the only story he never tells from the beginning to the ending.”

“Do you know how he met your Grandma?”

He smirks and starts walking again. He can feel Cassandra waiting for his answer with a frown.

“Of course I do”

“Then what happened?”

“You really wanna know?”

“I feel like she's almost a part of my life you know?”

Varian doesn't react, not physically, but for a second of shock, words are running on his throat and stopping on the tip of his tongue. He has to take a big burning breath of cold air to put the letters appart and tell something that doesn't sound like an alphabet soup.

“They met when they were young, because Corona was smaller back then. I think he already told you about her Hazelnuts eyes and incredible brown hair?”

“Yep.”

“It kind of stayed in his mind. She left for uni, one of the first women of the city and when she came back, she had her licence. And a baby.”

She doesn't comment this. Varian guesses it's not too difficult to understand, that his mother is not the biological daughter of his grand-father.

“She was married?”

“No. It was a scandal, as you can imagine, the single, unmarried mother, who wanted to work as an historian. Grand-Dad thought she was clever and interesting and he chose to ask her for help. It was at this moment he started his business of historical furniture replicas.”

Now that Varian thinks about it, Grand-Dad Xavier hired his father too, when Mummy and him were dating.

“And she said yes, and they get married.”

“No.” Varian laughs. “She said 'no thank you' and he was desperate about it. So he started to carve my mother some wood toys and learned Corona's history. He flirted with her for five years before she accepted a date. They never left each other after that.”

She chuckles and Varian who's looking at her from the corner of his eyes follows the white column of her breath as it leaves her mouth.

“She seemed like a catch.”

“She surely was. Did he tell you about the day she had a fight with the mayor?”

It's quite strange to talk with her in the almost empty street in the middle of February, but it's also very easy. Simple. Normal.

Until three bips ring and Cassandra stumbles. He doesn't ask what it is, he knows. He made the device. Three bips, it's the battery of her prosthetic who just died. He seizes the metallic wrist and gets pinch by the icy bite of iron under the three layers of clothes that separates it from his fingers.

“What are you doing?”

“It's thirteen pounds or so, It's heavy.”

“Varian, I don't need help.”

“I do. I need to know that I can be useful to you.”

She stops, they are half way to her place, in the park Varian used to go to when he was a child, meters away from the swings.

“I'm older than you” she states

Varian's hand shivers a little.

“I know.”

“And I met you when you were a child.”

“I was there”

“And... Metallic arm or not, I only have one hand left.”

“Yet I'm here.”

Cassandra turns to him and she has a new face. Varian really hopes this is not one he will have to pin under the word “rejection”.

“I'm not the one you need. I'm broken and I don't know where the pieces are.”

“You're asking the wrong question, Cassandra.”

“There is no question. Only facts”

“There is a lot of questions” Varian tries to chuckle “The most important is, what do you want?”

In place of her answer, the moment she takes her breath, a white point falls. It's the first of hundreds of a thousand more. Fast and big snowflakes hitting the floor in silence, claiming their place on the ground, on the shoulders of her coat, on this moment of his life.

They stay face to face, in the rain of coton candy snow. She doesn't say a word more, but if her answer was an easy one, she would already have talked.

“Do you know that every Snowflake is unique? Not two of the same shape. It might sound stupid, but it's true. The thing is, if it wasn't the case, snow couldn't be. Every flaw makes them more perfect.”

“Varian... It's not as easy as this...”

“It is.”

He brushes a snowflake on one of her cheeks. It's no use. Snow has already made a white crown in the wool of her beanie, and flows like diamond on her raven hair. He just feels that if he doesn't hold-on to her a little, he's gonna crumble.

“You are difficult and you hate to be helped or to have to ask for something or to wait. You are impatient and quick to anger. You don't talk about what upsets you and you open-up once in a blue moon. And you drive me crazy sometime but... You make me feel safe and free and happy and you give everything a meaning. Cassie, if you don't want me, I can go, but if you are just scared not to be what I need, what I want, then you have to know that you are the snowflake completing me.”

Cassandra chuckles, or sighs, it's hard to stay concentrate when he feels her breath on his mouth. She looks at him, green eyes full of gold sparkles, the same she had when he first met her, under wetter snow, with something a little bit softer shining in it.

“This is the worst confession I've ever heard. And you hate snow.”

“But I like you. And I really want to know if you like me too...”

She leans a little in the hand he put on her face. She closes her eyes and takes a breath. A snowflake catches her lashes. It's a second Varian feels in every of his bones. A moment of complete silence, where all is stopped, but his beating heart and the realization that nothing will ever be the same.

“You are not asking the right question” Cassandra whispers.

Her words are fragile and thin, like a web made of frozen threads. He could have missed them, even in the silence of the winter.

“Then what is the right question?” he asks as she moves her head and opens her green eyes.

“Can I kiss you?”

Varian's blood boils as it rushes through his veins. He stoops, as she rises her head.

“Wait. Are you asking me to ask you? Or are you asking me if you can?”

She chuckles a little, then squeezes her lips and start laughing for real, putting undesirable inches between them.

“Oh I can't believe this one surprised me!” she says with the biggest smile he's ever seen on her face. “Yes.”

“It's multiple choices” he answers, still at his place.

Maybe he lost his shot, or maybe she wasn't asking? But when she walks toward him, her feet erasing the prints they previously left by getting closer, Varian feels in every fiber of his being that nothing is lost.

“It depends on the question, don't you think?”

She smiles but there is something shaking on her lips and Varian sees the scene in frames, when the corner of her mouth starts withering.

“So, Cassie” he asks, unable to hear anything but his heart pulsing through his lips. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes. Please, yes.”

He dreamt about this moment so many times.

He moves down, she moves up. The tips of their cold noses brush and her lips are dry against his. She is shy, and he is unsure, but the moment he stops trying to do this perfectly, the moment he just feels that kiss, it becomes incredible.

Because everything making him is changing into bubbles of happiness, the world spins at the rhythm of his heart and his skin burns of joy.

Nothing bad can happen in that kind of heat.

She smiles when they are appart, he starts laughing because bliss transforms breathing into guffaws.

When they finally arrive at her flat, snow is everywhere.

He can't leave, that night, nor the day after because Cassandra's block is in a little street and the snow removal doesn't happen until the Sunday afternoon.

Varian is stuck by the snow with Cassandra. He is twenty-three and for the first time in ages, he feels in a safe place he never wants to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Better late than never..? ~
> 
> Have you read the last work for the Advent Calendar? It's so cute!
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28255557


	25. 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there ~
> 
> Happy Christmas Eve ~
> 
> In this chapter there is a "*" during a moment. I've realized during proof-reading, that I put this idea but that it wasn't initially mine. It came from another story and I can't remember if it was a Fanfiction, or a printed book or anything. I feel totally ridiculous about this and I'm sorry not to give more information because I can't remember anything appart from a conversation between the two characters in a room full of boxes and I keep thinking about it but really nothing QQ
> 
> I wanted to take this moment out of the chapter but it made sense for the story and I felt like something was missing without it so... ><
> 
> I'll leave you with this chapter ~

“Here you are” Cassandra says behind him.

Varian raises his head to catch a glimpse of her before looking back into the old box.

“What are you looking for?”

“You said you were missing snow. I'm looking for snow.”

“You are looking for snow in the attic?”

“Yep.”

“I knew you would lose your head in a small place.”

He smiles, lays a little against her when she approaches and sits in his back.

They started living together at the end of his school year. He still have two years – he's going to take one - before being doctor in applied chemistry specialty “no one really understands what you're doing exactly, just stick to chemistry Varian or people start panicking”. They don't have a lot of money, Cassandra has found a day job she hates to pay the bills and Varian divides his time between his studies and free work he owes to people who helped pay for Cassandra prosthetic - she will never know about this, but her metallic arm is a group project and Varian is prouder than he thought he could be.

It results in no real living room, a convertible sofa they use as a bed in a little flat with walls so thin, they talk to each other from bathroom to kitchen. It's not what he expected his life would be and it's surely not what he wants to give her.

The situation is surely going to be better in some time, when he will find a job and be able to afford more. He had to skip lunches during almost a month to buy her the lipstick she loves to wear.

“Found it.” He smiles when he catches the object.

“It's a... Snow globe.”

“Yep.”

“You were looking for a snow globe..?”

“It was mine. My mother gifted it to me when I was... Five? I think?”

“It's engraved...” Cassandra says when she turns it down.

“Never stop being yourself”

Cassandra smiles softly, makes the snow fall and looks at the little white points in the glass globe. There is a softness, behind her tough actions, something caring, almost childish she doesn't allow anyone, even her, to see. Evey time Varian spots a little of it, he feels blessed.

“You never told me why you hate snow.”

“It was snowing during my mother's funeral.” Varian explains in a soft voice. The memories still burning of freezing realization in his mind. “I spotted her scarf when everyone was telling their sympathy and I wanted her to have it, because, you know... She was out, without her scarf. Obviously she had to be cold.”

Cassandra puts the snow globe down to touch his cheek. Varian doesn't feel able to look at her.

“Snow just turned into that awful cold thing that buried my mother and I just... until last year, it was dangerous.”

“Last year?”

“Yeah. You see there is, that girl? Incredible green eyes? Short hair? She asked me to kiss her in a park? Almost begged.”

“I'm sure it was the other way around.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She declares before moving to put a quick kiss on his lips “Have you ever thought that maybe, the snow this day, was something your mother sent?”

“My mother sending a meteorological phenomenon on her funeral for what exactly?”

“To show you she was still here? To remind you to stay yourself? To tell you that nothing will ever be the same and yet nothing has to change?”

He puts his forehead against hers, thinks for a second, unable to fight his reason and the pain the idea creates in him.

“Do you really believe in this?”

“I don't know... I never really been loved like this by my mother, but... there is something so real in your bond with your mom... It seems possible.”

“I don't know... It hurts too much to think like this...”

“Then I will not talk about it again.”

He smiles when he kisses her. It's soft, a little haunted.

“I need help!” Rapunzel says from the hatch of the attic.

“What are they talking about?” Varian asks while standing up.

“Education methods.”

Cassandra laughs and rises before giving her left hand to Varian. They can hear the laugh from the stairs and Rapunzel shoots them a desperate look.

“What happens?”

“Two bottles of wine and the champagne of the dessert. You know, traditional Christmas problems” Rapunzel answers him. “Eugene started talking about how Erik is not eating his vegetables and everyone talked about its own experiences and now it's picture time.”

“Wait? There is photographs?” Cassandra questions with a too big smile for Varian's taste.

“Yes.”

She rushes down stairs and Varian turns to Rapunzel.

“I'm the one driving us home, tonight, she might be a little drunk.”

“Or just happy to see your chubby red cheeks and baby uncontrolable hair?”

“... Wait. Oh no. No. No. No!”

He follows Cassandra, Rapunzel shouts something about running in the stairs.

“And here, he was seven months and was already trying to get up!”

“Oh Misery and Despair... Marie Curie, send help.” he complains as he walks into the room, right in the center of the photo attack.

It's nothing out of the ordinary, the thousand of embarasing pictures you expect to find in a photographs album. First bath, ugly crying, drooling sleep, naked moment... and more.

But there is one picture in the center of it all, that stops everyone's comments.

It's a body picture. Varian is a baby, the one already seen on so many photographs with strange honey hair and blue eyes, big baby with more grease than members -Cassandra put her heel on his leg when he said this, he's not going to make that mistake again. But on this one, he's looking at the camera.

And her mom is looking at him. And there is so much love in that look.

She is radiant. Full of light in front of the window, smiling in a tender way.

“It's your mother?” Cassandra's whispers.

“Yes...” he answers.

He has a stupid movement, caressing the paper with his fingertip, like he could actually touch her through it.

“She is truly beautiful.”

“Yes she is...”

It takes him a second to register that Arianna is the one who talked.

“But I've always been surrounded by pretty women” He tries to joke to light up the mood.

There is no picture of his mother in the house, none at his Grand-Dad's place and he never thought about putting some in his own home. They were all put out of view the year he turned seven because he was starring at the pictures all day and crying when they weren't moving.

The photo parade takes a stop when Rapunzel steps in, to save herself from the shame she hasn't stopped when Varian was the victim -traitorous ally. It's a miracle when everyone falls half asleep on the couch and Varian succeeds to make Rapunzel take a nap with the twins.

When he makes it to the kitchen, Cassandra is almost over with the dishes. He equips himself with a towel and takes his first glass.

“You know that it's gonna be your turn, next?”* he starts the conversation.

“My turn for what?”

“Embarrassing child pictures” he explains with a pause between syllables.

“Nope.”

“Equity, Cassie.”

“It's not that I don't want” she says after putting the last wine glass on the side of the sink. “It's that I don't own any.”

“What?”

“I don't have pictures of me before I'm seven, I think.”

“What?”

“Abandoned child, remember?” she answers with a finger pointed in her direction. “When your parents give you up and never come back, they are not the kind to make a fun album full of cute photographs.”

He holds her in the blink of an eye, without even realizing it.

“We have to make a thousand of embarrassing picture of you, now, you realize that?”

“Do we?”

“Yes. I'm gonna carry them everywhere in my phone and save some in my wallet.”

“So old fashion.”

“What's the point of being alive, if I don't have you always by my side?”

“Oh my.... It's the wine?”

“The wine?”

“That makes you this cheesy?”

The wine makes him bold. But Cassandra is not the love type. Loving nicknames, sweet words, tender moves, it's hard for her -the sober her, she's softer, with a glass of wine, she allows herself to let things go. She's another, precious kind of caring.

“Maybe, or maybe it's just that I love you.”

She hums a sound almost like a smile in the skin of his neck, right where his open shirt leaves a place for his torso to start and pulls back.

“We shouldn't leave too late.”

“We wait for them to wake up and we go?”

“Perfect.”

When they leave with bags of presents and photographs, Varian slips on a patch of ice, made by a freeze puddle. Cassandra purses her lips not to laugh when he stabilizes himself before the fall.

He realizes, as she's trying to control herself, that he could fall, every day that will make his life for another twenty-four years and more, if it's to be more in love with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have you read the story wrote by Adi for day 24:
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28280436
> 
> And there is also the story for day 25 by Froggy (Don't read it before Christmas !):
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/28286136
> 
> For me, I see you tomorrow, probably later than during the rest of the Calendar and with a long End Note ~


	26. 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, late sorry (I was on time. But it starts snowing. No joke. I felt like Varian xD)
> 
> Chapter 25 ~
> 
> Ps: When Eugene says "Found" he means "stolen"  
> Ps2: A scarf Divi, yes, But which one? ;)

When he was seven years old, he fell in love with a girl. She was older than him, more than the double of his age. He was traumatized, sad and lonely. He missed his mother and he could barely see his father.

At eight, she was one of the persons he needed the most in his life. There was a thread of dependance between him and that strange girl. She was reassuring and calming and he needed her so much that Destiny put her on his path when he was about to do something stupid at ten. She was the only person, he would have listened to, because Cassandra couldn't lie or hurt him.

She was there, by little touchs during his puberty, saying hello from time to time. She was an idea in his mind, shy girl not confessing her burning flame for him -Adult Varian facepalms everytime he thinks about this moment of his life because, truly, it was ridiculous.

When he was thirteen, she joined the army and it broke something in him. Adolescence was already a bad moment of Life but this, the idea of her death, waking him up in the middle of the night, shivering from icy terrorized sweat made everything worst. He was insufferable and angry at everything.

Fifteen years and a spurr, hormonal imbalance, crooked voice and changes, left him unable to understand who he truly was. And there was the following years, barely seeing her, learning that she was in love with someone else.

For a moment he buried her and himself, in two differents graves of Life. Cassandra was a woman who broke his heart and he was a man, who was betraying the dream she was, in the arms of another fantasy. But the thread was still here and Cassandra was on the other end.

He pulled on his side.

Ignorant of the fact, that he had done it when they both needed it the most.

He met a human, a woman with flaws and fears, a person who had lost everything that was making her life and he became the one who helped, the one she needed.

Once upon a time, a little boy fell in love with a girl.

Today, a young man loves a woman.

It's not a fairy tale and they are not perfect. Varian is desperate for a touch and he can't keep his hands to himself. There is always one of them traveling on hers or the line of her shoulders, her arms, her back, a lock of her hair. It's not something he does consciously. He just looks for contact to feel reassured. Everytime she is away, he feels in danger that she might disappear.

Cassandra is a Grumpy cat on this matter. She looks for him and leaves as soon as she realizes it happens. She takes a place in his arm in front of a movie and pouts in discomfort whenever he moves, talking about how he can't stay in place. She grumbles, when he kisses her cheeks in the morning. She is scared every time she has to accept she looks for affection.

Varian can't schedule anything, he forgets the laundry until none of them has anything to wear anymore. He hates to do the dishes and he works too much.

Cassandra doesn't know how NOT to overcook anything, she puts her dirty clothes anywhere but IN the laundry basket. She goes running in the morning and keeps her shoes in when she's back and she lectures him everytime he comes back of shopping with the wrong product like he is magically suppose to know that she wants the blue one and not the green when it's not writen on the list.

But she puts messages using the steam of the shower, on the mirror of the bathroom and sets alarms to remind him of what he has to do. She does the laundry and he puts the dry clothes on the dressing. He cooks and she does the dishes.

She takes him to run with her, when the night has been good and he holds her, in the early morning when it hasn't been.

She learns to shows affection and to receive some, he learns to trust that she is still here even when he can't hold her hand.

At the beginning, her arm was a problem. She has to put it on charge during the night for it to be usable during the day and she couldn't stand for him to see her without it. The first months were quite a circus. The first times, she kept it until he pretended to sleep, so she could take it off. And then were was the moments she waited for him to be in bed, in the complete dark -than none of them can stand- to join him. “I don't care and I know how it looks like without it, just take it off, it's been weighting for nothing since more than an hour.”

She made a scene. Varian took days to understand that the problem wasn't him. It was her. She just didn't accept the idea of someone seeing her without an arm. He spent the following night holding her and talking in her neck about stupid shameful things.

He discovered, as she, that secrets were easier to say in the dark. The words can hide, letter after letter, in some corner and be left unseen. Every sentence making a bad memory, an hidden desire, a strange idea or an unsure project, rolling themselves around a star miles away in the univers.

They talk so much, that sometimes, Varian feels like they wear the words. But he's never happier than when Cassandra opens up to him.

One day, she asked about the reason why he started calling her Cassie. Varian never realised, that it wasn't obvious. “I wanted you to be mine. Cassandra is an incredible name... I think I'm in love with every letter of it... It's a love song. But everyone was using it. And I wanted something that was just... Ours. It was my way to be linked to you. Maybe it's strange.... It has the same number of letters than my name... It's like we can write them with the same amount of ink, one thread to make you and me.”

She started interlacing their fingers during the night, after he confessed. And it's surely meaningfull, but he is just too happy to really think about the sense it holds.

And of course, after almost two years together they still fight over who has to deal with the bins or who finished the toothpaste, but it's not complicated to deal with this kind of events -Varian has learnt that Cassandra is always right, it's easier and less dangerous.

“What is happening here?”

“You won't believe me!” Cassandra says with a Mona Lisa's smile.

It usually announces that she found something about Eugene or Lance she can use to blackmail one or the other.

He loves her so much.

“So you know this little game we play with Raps.”

“Yeah.” -absolutely not.

“Well she found a picture of you at three in your house garden.”

“Okay.” -What game?

“And you and your parents made a Snowman, who had a scarf”

“Maybe...?”

“It's where it's getting interesting.”

She gives him the picture and Varian seizes it with a thousand questions going from “What am I suppose to look at?” to “What kind of game you and my false blood-sister are you playing with pictures of me when I was a child?”

“Yeah okay... I see the picture...”

When exactly did his parents think it was a good idea to make him wear a beanie with bear ears?

“Don't you see?”

“See what?”

“The scarf.”

“Which one?”

“Here, the one with the raccoon on the Snowman!”

“Okay... Hm... Cassie, it's not that it's not fun, but I don't really understand what you are trying to tell me...”

“Oh... You don't... Okay. Close your eyes.”

“To look at a picture?”

“You trust me?”

“With my life.”

“Then close your eyes.”

He does as said and after she put a kiss on his cheek, he can feel her leaving the room.

The first “I love you” was from her. It came out of nowhere a morning. She was late and he was looking for an information in a scientific article. She grabbed the coffee he extended to her, in the kitchen -running with her shoes on the clean floor- and she shouted “Late, see you tonight. Love you!”

It was an accident.

Or at least it's how Varian chose to analyse it during the day. It wasn't complete and it was Cassandra. So love declaration should have been something complicated and catastrophic with fear and shyness and so many strange things Love was supposed to erase. He was sure she didn't realise what she's just said and he chose not to talk about it.

Except she heard herself and spent the day trying to understand why she said what she said and the evening trying to figure out why Varian didn't reply. And Varian wouldn't have known this, if she hadn't cry in the bathroom, three days later because she was sure she messed up and she said the words too soon -like Varian didn't confess before their first kiss.

In the end, it was complicated and catastrophic.

The next step can't be missed, he has to do something perfect.

“What are you doing?” he asks as she puts something around his neck.

“Open your eyes.”

He looks at the thing's old blue fabric. It's full of stained marks and truly worn. It's old and it has a strange smell of old cloth kept somewhere wet for a long time under the detergent.

There is an embroidered raccoon on it.

She smiles like she found the secret of universe, right in front of him.

His Cassandra.

“It's yours! I asked your dad when Rapunzel send me the picture! Your mother embroidered it because you were crying about your bear that you couldn't take with you at school and she put it on your scarf! I stole this to Eugene everytime I could because he was keeping it in his car as a lucky charm ever since he found it, and when I left for the army he gave it to me, thinking it could be useful and I used to carry it everywhe-”

And she can't ramble anymore, because he is kissing her. And all his life his running to her. Every second and every minute making him and all the time he has to live.

And more.

“Marry me.”

She makes a face and he makes one too. It takes a second for him to realise and for her to breath again and he starts panicking.

“No! Wait! It's not what I meant! I mean, of course marry me! But not like this. Not- OOOOH! Do I have to cancel the restaurant?”

“What restaurant?” she wonders with a ghost haunting her voice.

“The restaurant for the proposal. I just- Oh Curie and Bohr, I missed my shot! Wait! Okay, give me a second to think about a solution! I haven't seen anything about ruined proposal on Youtube, I need a second to re-think how to ask you if you want to marry me.”

“Yes...”

“It's just... Close your eyes so at least I can surprise you with the ring? … And I can't now... This is Hiroshima.”

“Varian...”

“It's just... You had my scarf as a lucky charm and I was so in love with you when I was a child and you are just- And if I can't stop loving you, when you keep your shoes in the flat, why waiting for us to be something else?”

He raises his head to her, to find a confirmation and she looks at him like she doesn't know what to tell him.

It's so far from what he had planned... They were supposed to go back to Corona and she was supposed to wear a dress that Rapunzel had chosen and he spent so much time picking the right flowers with Arianna and there was the fancy restaurant that Lance found and it was a night with shooting stars and he was supposde to put his knee on the floor and to propose in the park where they first kissed, with a long heartbreaking speech Eugene helped him make.

And he just said two words after a kiss.

“Okay, no. I still have the ring!”

“Varian...” she repeats.

He can still put his knee on the floor and ask her with a ring and make everything not perfect but less weird.

She is against the kitchen table, right where he left her and he gets on his knee, a perfect 90°angle and the little blue velvet box in his hand. He has to remember to open the box. He always forgets to open the box.

“The stars are...”

Not in the room.

“Can you just imagine that there arte shooting stars around us?” he aks with a frown. It's a long speech and he's not sure that he worked it as much as he should have. “The stars are falling but not as hard as me, the first time I-”

“Okay. Stop. Just stop. It's... It almost sound like something Eugene could say.”

Varian squeezes his lips and looks at her. She doesn't look like someone who's gonna say yes. And it's not that Varian hasn't thought it was possible, it's why he wanted it to be perfect. For her to see, that he was ready to do everything.

He falls back, sits on the kitchen floor.

“This is a disaster.” he grumbles in his hands.

“Kind of, yes...”

“It's just... I love you so much. And my parents they had that perfect proposal. My father asked Mummy in front of the field and he told her how nothing was his, but his love for her and that it couldn't touch the horizon and... Eugene made his in the boat Rapunzel and him had their first date in. And my Grand-Dad made Grand-Ma Mary a puzzle and... I wanted to give you something to remember...”

“I'm never gonna forget this.”

“Please do forget, it's the worst thing I've ever done in my life.”

“Meh, there was that bet with Hugo...”

Varian grumbles. They had a bet, about who will find the solution to a problem in a project. If Hugo lost, he had to dye his hair in pink. If Varian lost he had to let them grow for two years.

Hugo never had pink hair.

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. It wasn't that bad, until you started panicking.”

“Of course, I panicked. My life is fantastic because you are in it, and I don't see why I should wait longer to tell you how much I want to spend it with you. And I can't promise you that everything will be easy all the time. Or that we won't fight. I can't say that it will be perfect. But I can promise you that I will do my everything to be a man that deserves you, that I will love you a little bit more everyday.” he looks at her, from his place on the floor. She looks taller than her 5.5 foot. “I will cherish you Cassandra for the rest of my life. It's all that I want. You are all that I want. Now and forever and... I love you. I really love you, I should have started with this, shouldn't I?” he chuckles, words failing him “I feel like I would be the luckiest man that ever existed, if you accept to be mine... Or that I be yours... But I totally missed that.”

“Yes.”

“I love your honnesty, but you can stop telling me how I ruined my proposal.”

Can you propose someone twice? Technically, there wasn't a no. Just a big, bad, humiliating amount of moments.

“Varian, listen, okay? Yes.”

“You mean-”

“I mean exactly what I said.” she laughs when sitting by his side. “Varian, I... I had a perfectly planned life and everything fell appart. I never had my parents by my side. They abandonned me in a mall three weeks before Christmas and never picked me up. I was adopted by the nicest man I could ever had the chance to call my Dad.”

“I know.”

“I know, you know. You embarassed yourself, let me embarass myself too. Mariage is also about sharing shame.”

He laughs, too many emotions runing in his head for him to understand everything.

“The thing is... I've spend my life trying to prove my worth, trying to prove that my father was right when he took me in. To-” her voice breaks. “The point is, you make me feel like I have nothing to prove and it took me a while to understand, that it's not because you don't expect anything from me. It's because you believe in me. And you show me what love is. Varian, I would be an idiot to accept because of the proposal and not because you are someone who want to make me smile. Someone I want to see smile so much, I payed a shamefull amount of money on dry cleaning for a scarf. You are strange and most of the time, we are in ridiculous situations but you open the world and you make me feel... Safe. For the first time of my life, you make me want to take a risk and to belong somewhere. And I turned this about myself when it wasn't the point...”

“I think I got the point.” he smiles. “So Cassie...” he says to the crying -incredible, wonderful, is there a way to be more perfect?- woman by his side, trying to look like a knight in white armor. “Do you wanna marry me?

“Yes, please, yes...”

He doesn't kiss her, he smiles too much for it to happen correctly, he holds her until she stops crying and laughing at the same time -maybe it's him, it doesn't matter anymore, they are going to share everything from now on.

“It wasn't so badly done in the end...” he whispers.

“You forgot the ring.”

“Oh Marie Curie!” he swears as she bursts into laughter.

She comments the engagement ring and Varian knows they think the same when she says exactly what he said when he spotted the white rough diamond in the jewelry showcase.

He is twenty-five, wears a long gone scarf that life brought him back and kisses the woman who used to keep it, as she wears, at a ringed finger, a promise.

Shaped like a snowflake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, pssst, don't leave like this, Varian's adventures continue for the month. Yes, you read well, THIS STORY WILL STOP ONLY THE 31th of DECEMBER.
> 
> MERRY CHRISTMAS! and see you tomorrow ~


	27. 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, there ~
> 
> I hope you had a good moment yesterday and that today was a "rest" day -I need a rest day after Christmas xD-

Obviously, the wedding was a difficult subject. After the unbelievable happiness, there was a preparation and it could have been fun to see that they didn't have any commune idea about anything if it wasn't tragic.

Cassandra wanted a small wedding, something intimate with no useless expenses. Varian wanted a party, with flowers everywhere and fireworks. At some point, there had been two teams. Cassandra “Nothing fancy” against Varian “we only marry once”.

Cassandra had Hugo “Just because it's fun to see your face when the both of us disagree”, Nuru “It's also her wedding, let her decide” and his father -that traitor- “It's not about the celebration, Varian, it's about the bride and groom and their love”.

Varian had Rapunzel “Big dress and a party, come on Cass!”, Eugene “I'm not on CassAndra's side by principle” and Cassandra's father -surprisingly- “If you take another name than mine, lets do this correctly”.

Grand-Dad Xavier, Yong, Arianna and Lance, just wanted them to have what they both wanted -and maybe a glass of champagne-.

They presented their arguments: Money, time, fairy tale success, dreams.

Varian won. “If you don't care, then let me have a perfect wedding?”

Cassandra gave up.

He picked a date, she started looking for a dress with Rapunzel. He made a list of guests and thought about a menu. They were half way through the whole process, finally not arguing when a fight blew up in the kitchen.

“Why don't you add more guests?”

“I add who I want to our wedding Varian.”

“There is three persons, Cassie. With your Dad.”

“I know.”

“Come on, there has to be more people you want to see on your wedding day.”

“Like who? My co-workers are insufferable and you don't want to see them on your wedding day”

“I don't talk about your co-workers, I talk about people you like and friends and people who are part of your life. I don't know!”

“Well, then tell me when you know!”

It made him grumble for days, he called Rapunzel during a lunch break to complain.

“I mean is it too much to ask for her to try? I made our first kiss a joke, and the first confession was a catastrophe, not talking about how I messed up the proposal! I just want to give her a perfect wedding, why is she so reluctant with this? It's not something to be angry about! It's just accepting to be spoiled!”

“... Varian, I think it's not what she wants at all...”

“You're on her team now?”

“It's not... I'm looking for a wedding dress with her as you know... And she's tried like... three?”

“Three is not bad.”

“Not three every time. Three in four weeks. And she's refused to show me the last one.”

“What?”

“... I think she doesn't want a big wedding.”

“You think she's gonna cancel..?”

“No. But I think she is... re-thinking?”

The whole afternoon was awful. He thought about that conversation and when he got home, to see that they received the wedding announcement, Cassandra was cuddling on the couch. She looked sad, she looked exhausted and she still had her engagement ring, but it was on a clenched fist.

“Do you still want to marry me..?” he asked without realizing it.

He couldn't recall seeing her that little and sad, and there had been nightmares and bad days with her arm. His heart was nothing more than a painful organ.

“And you?” she replied.

“No”, would have been easier to hear.

“Cassie... Once I've sent this things... it's gonna be difficult to cancel, I need to know.”

She clenched her fist more, and something broke when she glanced at the ring.

“Why do you want to get married, Varian?”

“Because-”

“Because it's what people do. You are doing things because it's what people do ! And it was cute as first because it looked like you were trying to understand the world but it's not fun when it comes to making me the person you want the world to imagine!”

“What-”

“I'm not a fairy-tale princess! I'm not! I don't have friends or family! Look at me! I'm old and I can't hide this!” she shouted pointing at her metalic arm like an insult “I'm nothing to be proud of! Nothing to show-off! Don't you see? I'm nothing... I'm-”

She broke and Varian just didn't understand. What did he miss this time? When did he stop making her feel like the most important thing in his life?

“Cassie... I love you.”

“No. You love what you want people to believe.” she sobbed in her couch's corner.

“No... I love you. I- I wanted to show you how much I-”

He wanted to offer her a day with everything she could have dreamed of. A day with light just for her. Flowers saying I love you, who will wither to explain her that it doesn't have any kind of importance to him to puts money and efforts in fading things as long as it's for her. He wanted her to wear a dress that makes her feel as pretty as he sees her. He wanted her to feel seen by all the persons he ever met because she is his world and what's the point to be alive, if she is not part of their lives?

But he made her suffer. He hurt her. Because he is bad at loving people. It's just him, he is unable to do things right.

“I love you. I love you. I love you more than anything and I'm an idiot. Cassie, I'm an idiot.”

He came to hold her, scared that she would refuse, scared that she might push him away but she held on to him and Varian felt more stupid than ever. It was almost easier when she was screaming.

“I wanted... My grand-parents had a little wedding on New Year's Eve to afford the party. And my parents, when they married, they didn't have a penny... They picked a day, got to the Mayor's Office with two of my father's friends and my Grand-Dad. My mother only had one white piece of clothing and they signed a paper, nothing else. And I know, we are not them Cassie, but I don't have a lot to offer, I wanted you to have a day to feel spoiled if the rest of our life is to be complicated... And I'm a weirdo-”

“You're no-”

“Yes, I am. I don't understand half of what is happening when it comes to people, and I've learned you, somehow, but I was thinking that it was just... You, not wanting to show that you wanted something and I'm so sorry, I've misread.”

She trembled and she cried and Varian understood as she relaxed in his arms, how tense she was.

“Why didn't you say anything...”

“You seemed so happy everytime... I just... Wanted you to have what you wanted... I don't care about anything, as long as I have you and it seemed so important for you...”

“I wanted a moment in our love life that wasn't a disaster...”

“What disaster..?” she asked, finally moving away from his neck.

“All of them... Me, unable to understand if I was supposed to kiss you and the moment I thought you didn't mean to say I love you and all... the accidental proposal... I want to give you the world and I can't even give you a successful romantic moment.”

“What are you talking about? Varian this is the dumbest thing you've said. Look at us. Three years of sharing a flat and engaged. Does it sound like a disaster, to you?”

“No...”

“See. It doesn't have to be... Big and spectacular and complicated... as long as it's true. I just want you... Flaws and weird moments, ridiculous situations and complicated mind.”

“But don't you want, I don't know, something special..?”

“I don't feel comfortable in a wedding dress, I don't want to see my half of the church almost empty and I'd rather buy a house to live our life than having a firework. But if it really matters to you, I can try harder.”

“I was so sure you were secretly dreaming of a wedding dress...”

“No. Every dress I tried made me feel ridiculous and... I see my arm, even with gloves or big sleeves or... I just see it. And I feel too old for this.”

His nose poked the skin of her forehead he could touch.

“You are and always have been the prettiest girl in my life. And every year just makes this easier to see and I don't think about your arm like it's a problem. It's something so incredible. Look how strong you are Cassie. You're right, I want to show off. I want to show the world how lucky I am to have that pretty, strong, marvelous woman by my side. But it's because I see you Cassie. I truly, see you. With everything making you even what you refuse to admit and it's what I call perfection. I should have talked about this, I should have explained you why I was making all this fuss, so you would have understood that it was love. Pure stupid, clumsy love.”

She had red eyes and that strangely bright nose, people have when they have cried. But she made that little shoulders move, showing that she was laughing through her tears and Varian started breathing again.

“You know what? Let's cancel all those too much plans that ask too much money anyways and make something easier.”

“I kinda like your parent's wedding.”

“Yeah, well, not their best idea. My mother had a summer white dress.”

“Wasn't it enough?”

“They married in plain December.”

Everything stopped with the sound of her laugh in the living room and Varian started to understand why his parents married like they did. No music will never be as perfect as her laugh.

It took a week, long conversations in the dark of the bedroom for Varian to realize with Cassandra's sleeping breath on his neck as the moon reflected itself on the snow globe, the wedding wasn't important. All they want can be resumed as a place to belong with someone letting them be true to theirselve.

A marriage.

It's an April Saturday morning and she ran before breakfast. Varian waits for her, with a bag and a cup of coffee. When she sits in front of him -with her shoes on- complaining about the cold, Varian pops the question one more time.

“Do you still want me?”

“What? Of course.”

“I have found us an appointement to the Mayor's office at eleven. To get married...”

She puts down her cup.

“I don't have a dress.”

“I know... And there are no flowers, no firework, no guests but our parents. Nothing for me to offer you but myself and all my years to come. And I don't know if it's enough seeing that you exchange it with yourself and your time but... it's honest, true and real.”

And maybe he wanted a big wedding to hide this too. That she will marry a weird, strange guy.

“I'm okay, if you are sure.” she whispers with a point of shyness.

“I'm sure. I'm ready for this. Ready as I'll ever be.”

“Well... I'll take a shower and then your name.”

She wears new jeans he bought her, a shirt she borrowed him. He pins the old earring Rapunzel gave him years ago on one of the button and wraps her in his mother's blue scarf.

They are late because she insists on buying flowers “I thought it could be a good thing to put them on your mother's grave after, don't you?”

He stupidly cries when her father insists on giving him her hand, loses his breath when she smiles in front of the mayor and forgets the rings -again. There are no vows in front of their family, no promises made public. All they share, all they have to give is theirs and no word they use, can be understand by anyone but the other. There are truths, told a thousand times already, who only make sense in the secret of an embrace.

When they get out, and she turns to him, under the rain of sparkles their family is throwing, it starts snowing.

And Varian choses to explain this, when she brushes a snowflake out of his cheek, by his mother sending her blessing.

He is twenty-six, married and believes in a form of Love that doesn't know Death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy to enter this moment of Varian's life with you ~
> 
> 5 new chapters with a married couple to come. It's kind of exciting, don't you think? ~


	28. 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey ~
> 
> I realize that I don't know anything about your timezone (after 27days... I might be totally dumb) so I have to do something casual in this section... >> So... Hm... I hope you are all okay, that it's not a too complicated time for you with the holidays and all ><

Icy shivers and suffocating memories.

He rises with a wet neck and the strange impression that all of his muscles are tense out of effort. Cassandra sleeps on the other side of the bed and Varian is desperate to talk with her, but he can't bring himself to waking her.

He leaves the bed and finds a place in the bathroom to put water on his neck. He feels sore and... angry.

He knows, he just dreamed, and nothing that happened in his head was real, but it feels true. He forces his eyes to focus on his ring finger and the gold band on it to come back in the realm of the living. They finally bought some rings. Cassandra spotted them one afternoon during a walk in the center of the city. Nothing but a rose-gold band “Original?” He didn't care and put it on his right hand after a week for their rings to touch when they interlace their fingers.

Cassandra thought it was a wonderful idea and he realized that he could marry her a second time just because she reacted like this.

When he understands that he is not gonna be able to calm down, he goes to the living room and sits with a book. Breathing is still a little hard, when Cassandra joins him. It's like pushing on his lungs.

“Are you gonna tell me what happened now?” she asks as she takes her place on his right.

Varian holds her hand, in a reflex. It's comforting.

“It's... I had a Nightmare...”

“About what?”

“Silence and snow.”

“Silence and snow” she repeats.

Varian nods and when she puts her forehead on the crook of his neck, he breathes more easily.

“The kids wanted to watch a movie. And Eugene and Raps, have Disney+”

“So..?”

“So I let them chose and Erik wanted to watch _Dumbo,_ but Fred was all on _Bambi”_

Cassandra tenses and he knows what she's thinking about.

“You watched _Bambi_.”

“Yeah... I knew about the whole... Dead mom things so I wasn't really surprised... but...”

“It brings back memories.”

“Hm. I can't stop thinking about the snow and the silence...”

“Why the silence? It's a talking movie and there is a shot. She is killed by hunters.”

Varian plays with her fingers, a ball of emotions making the words hard to say.

“There is that moment... In the forest. After she dies. And you know what happened, but he doesn't. And his father appears and tells him that she won't be with him anymore. And then there's a silence... A long silence. He doesn't understand. And how can words says that pain? And it's just so long and so loud and it's talking. And I can't stop thinking about this silence because it's done on purpose. Of course it's done on purpose in a movie where Death is a sound. And I'm haunted by this moment about that boy in the snow who doesn't understand that his mother is dead because it's not fair or logical or anything and no word can say it, so why talking anymore and I just- I've dreamed of snow and silence and grieving.”

“You never told me this.”

“I've never watched _Bambi_ before. And I'm not gonna do that mistake again. Nevermore.”

“I'm not talking about _Bambi_. I'm talking about the silence, why not talking anymore after a Death.”

“Why would I?” he wonders.

It's a strange gymnastic to look at her in their position and Varian realizes his mistake the moment he doesn't feel her warmth anymore.

“Because you've stopped talking, didn't you? After your mother's Death.”

“... I did. Because adults were stupid.”

“Really?”

“They were telling that Mummy was dead, but that she was still with me. Love metaphor and all. Like metaphor can hold you at night and explain Newton's laws. And if words are just words what is the point of language? It was like a big web of lies and I didn't like it.”

She comes closer, and put a kiss on his cheek.

“You're good at seeing the things no-one spots, but you usually miss the more obvious part, Love.”

Love is tricky. When she calls him Love, it's because she is scared to hurt him. Like that moment, he read her a part of his thesis because he was proud of a pun and she explained him that “maybe, it would be easier to understand, if the sentence has at least one word who's made with less than four syllables, Love. …You weren't asking about this, were you? You were happy about something. Oh my! I'm sorry, okay, let's do this again explain me what I've missed.” Varian forgave her, she was just too adorably sorry not to. And it's hard for most people to catch what he catches, at least, Cassandra tries.

Varian takes a big breath and leans in her direction. It might be a hug-conversation.

“Which is?”

“It's a story about how life is stronger than Death. How everything carry-on when the people we love are gone, but their love stays with us.”

He raises his head -almost hits her in the process- and looks at her. And of course, his love for her is unstoppable and will never die but-

“It feels unfair.”

“What?”

“That I had to imagine her love with me when she was not by my side. That she died and people just kept talking about how she loves me. It's not comforting to have someone reminding you of what you've lost.”

“I don't know... I had no love to remember.”

Varian learned about this during a conversation at twenty-one. He asked about her mom and she just paused in the conversation and acted as if nothing had been said. So Varian asked Rapunzel, and he had a pretty, complicated conversation about abandonment and Cassandra's life. When he called the day after and he just put informations on the table like the idiot he can be from time to time when he is scared to hurt her.

“What am I not supposed to do, or say, or I don't know?”

“This kind of things? Acting like it's a disease.”

“I'm an idiot.”

“Sometimes you can be, genius.”

Varian got scared to say something stupid so she started talking about it by herself. “Was four. Barely remember. Tried to find informations. Don't want to know.” Varian stopped asking. Sometimes, she drops a word or two about it.

There was that night, Varian will never forget, when he talked about the day he ran away and she slipped informations about how she misses her biological parent's love.

“I thought I would kill you.”

“What?”

“You were alone, at night in the snow because you disagreed with your father and it was so stupidly childish.”

“I was ten.”

“And so brillant about so many things. But you were making a scene because Arianna and Rapunzel were joining you and your father and... I didn't know how to react, I was angry at you. I just...”

“Cassie...?”

“I was left in a mall. Rainy day. Just left here. And when I grew-up, I was desperate for a mother to explain me what being a girl and dealing with... All this” she had pointed at herself “meant. And you've run away from your home... Because you weren't happy about your family”

“I... I'm sorry.”

“Don't be... I was young, and desperate to find a reason and to feel loved. Now that I think about it, I think I was in the same situation than you. Away from the people who love me, looking for something long lost.”

“... It helped me... What you said that night... It really did help.”

“... I- I think I've told you what I wished to hear back then.”

Varian swore that day, to never make her look for what he can offer her, in other places.

“Why are you smiling?”

“I was thinking about that day, I've run away.”

“It was so irresponsable. Anything could have happened.”

“Something happened. I found you. And you found me. I've run away from a house, and we found our home.”

“I forgive this level of bad romance because you had a nightmare.” she grumbles before kissing him.

“Whatever helps you sleep.”

Varian is twenty-seven, and some nights, he still dreams of snow and silence, but his days are full of heat and love words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized at some point, that even if it wasn't intended I might have been inspired by Bambi for chapter 5 and 6, so it seemed natural to talk about it in the story >>
> 
> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH LATE EDIT BECAUSE I'M DUMB AS JDKJDBKDJB: Divi is the one who gave me the idea to have Varian wearing his ring on the right hand. She made an art of Married Cassarian and Varian had is wedding-band on the right hand. She called it a mistake, I call this brillant and I just love the idea of him wearing it on the right side for his ring and Cassandra's to touch when they hold hands in the street. It's a little detail, but I feel like it's screaming love. (Divi you are so clever and so kind in the mean time, sometimes, I can't believe you exist QQ)


	29. 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there ~
> 
> I hope you will like this chapter and that you had/have/will have a happy day ~

He looks at the suitcase in front of him. Belongings packed to take a small place and be easy to carry.

Behind him, the house looks so empty and cold that he can't believe there is life in it.

“You've packed everything?”

“Yes.”

“Then time to go”

He's going to throw up.

“Maybe... Maybe I could stay a day more or-”

“It's not gonna be easier tomorrow you know.”

“You are right.”

Varian stands up, takes a big breath. He really feels sick when he walks the three steps separating him for his luggage.

“So... This is it.”

“I guess, yes.”

He smiles to her, thousand of electric shocks, vibrating in his body. It feels so strange, knowing they aren't gonna be together, tomorrow, at the same hour.

“You really are gonna miss that flight, you know?”

“I don't want to go...”

“Varian, we talked about this...”

“You sure you can't come?” ²

“I can't and I won't drive you if you make saying goodbye so hard”

Varian pouts before opening the front door.

“You could try to keep me with you.”

“I'll do it. I let you do what you want.”

She's right and it hurts.

They had the perfect life.

When Varian got his doctoral degree, he found a place to teach in Uni, an hour away from Corona. It's the kind of things that never happens. It was fascinating during the first months. And then it got awfully boring. But there was the marriage, and then the house and all the bills and credits and Varian thought it was enough to have this secure almost dream job and the house Cassandra's always wanted.

The little garden, the big attic, two floors, big living-room, open kitchen and three bathrooms. The upstairs with a bedroom for them, a guest room and two studies.

An extra room.

It was the beginning of a conversation, of a new project. Having a child. Varian was in love with the idea, Cassandra scared but a little bit more ready everyday.

And Varian destroyed it all.

It was during a conference, a public talk with an offer for the students. One year, in Canada, Medical application of chemistry. So many things to learn and discover, so many possibilities and an helpful job.

He came home with the idea in head, thinking about his mother, about Cassandra's arm and so many things he could study and avoid and change and help and when he got to the bedroom to change his clothes, he spotted the close door of the empty room.

It was an impossible choice, one that he didn't have to make if he didn't talk about the offer to Cassandra. Except he did. It wasn't an accident. Cassandra dug because unlike him, she interprets signs correctly.

“Tell me or I divorce.”

“Paperwork.”

“Don't care.”

“I think I hate my job and I've found another one, but I have to go back to school. Without money. In Canada. For a year.”

“Oh... I'll go check the bills. See how we can afford this.”

“This-”

“I'll go look at the papers.”

They couldn't afford it. Varian knew. Or if they did, they would have to sell the house. Cassandra moved strings Varian never thought about.

“I have a solution.”

“Really?”

“Yes. But you gonna hate it.”

He hated it.

His father offered to sell a field -a good, valuable one- and his grand-father had useless savings that he claimed Varian will “inherit anyways”. Cassandra changed her contract to do more hours. If Varian locked himself in a student dorm room and only made the trip once to go and to come back, they could afford for him to go and for the house to be kept. But Dad and Grand-Dad would lost something and Cassie...

“You're not coming.”

“I can't. Life in Quebec is gonna be expensive if none of us really work and we have to pay for a flat and the house.”

“I'm sure-”

“No. I've tried. It was my last plan... Not coming and having your father selling this field.”

“Then I won't do it.”

“You do it. Varian you do it. It's important for you.”

“Not as much as you.”

“Love” -oh oh.- “I hate my job with more strenght than I hate Eugene.”

“It's because you like Eugene and just put an act.”

She had looked at him with a raised eyebrow that Varian remembered under the name of “Maybe when I'll talk about Divorce this time, I'll think about it seriously”.

“What I mean is this: Do it. If you want to do it and know you can succeed, go. And when you come back, we'll see how I can leave my job and study for something else”

“Are you sure it's something we can afford..?”

“If we talk about money... We will not have more than pasta to eat for a while and sometimes water. And I will have to take quick cold showers, and cut electricity at eight in winter and no movie theater or ordering food or anything that is not essential. But if we talk about happiness and future... We can't NOT afford this.”

“Really? Because there is a future, on the other side of this corridor too, Cassie.”

He will remember the way she held him after he said this, until the last day of his life. It was so soft and caring and desperate that he could have cried.

“You are clever and kind. And you have such a good heart Varian. You'll die in that university, and I will die with you. Our marriage, our family, everything will fall appart if you are unhappy during the longest hours of your days. I'm old-”

“You're not.”

“I'm older than you. And I'm starting to enter a difficult age to have a child, not impossible, but still, more complicated. We don't know for sure if this dream will live one day... But this year, is one you can use, to do something that will help you and make you feel good in our life. Varian, it's your call, but if you want to do it, I have your back, one hundred percent.”

“How are you gonna sleep, if I don't keep you warm..?”

“Poorly. But I'll make it... “

It was awful and exciting, scary and incredible. When he got received, he cried and laughed and he was unable to decide between the happiness to be a part of this project or the heartbreaking sadness to leave her behind. It was a snowy day, and he called the university to apologize -“There's no way for me to come, sorry really, the snow.”- and spent the whole day in bed, with bad movies on the little screen of his computer because it was easier to hold Cassandra until they both disappear in the embrace in their bed, than in front of the TV.

They had a last night tangled, talking of all they haven't thought useful to share during the last seven years but felt obligated to give each other before Varian's departure. Before leaving, he hung three frames in the empty room, like a promise.

“I can't go further with you...” she says when they are in front of his gate.

“That sound like a final good-bye.”

“Don't be stupid” she hits his arm with her fist. He feels her engagement ring through his shirt. “It's just a year, in our life. It's gonna be okay.”

“Of course. We have eternity ahead.”

She smiles, a reflex of her mouth but her eyes wear the green sadness that could break hearts of stone.

“I love you, more than everything”

“I love you this, exponential infinite.” she replies.

He takes their last kiss with him, a feeling of absence and loneliness making him dizzy after less than ten minutes. He plays with his ring, thinks of promises and love during the flight and when he finally puts his suitcase in his new room after more than two days without sleep, he calls Cassandra.

“You won't believe what kind of stickers the ex-occupant, left!”

When Varian puts the less valuable things he has on a rent-chamber for what will be the strangest year of his life, the first sound he hears is the laugh of his wife when she spots the Snowflakes left on the wall.

And Varian is maybe twenty-eight years old, this year, but he's finally realized, that he has to be himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a long way ~


	30. 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi ~
> 
> I have a thousand of things to do, today and tomorrow and that means that I just realized but counting this chapter, there is only three lefts QQ It's such a strange feeling 
> 
> Anyway! Good chapter all of you ~

“Why do you wear your coat?”

“Because I'm going out?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Oh! For- Varian, it's okay.”

“It's surely not okay.”

She rolls her eyes. Varian frowns.

“You're not leaving that couch, young lady! Stay under your blanket and drink something hot and healthy!”

“You worry too much.”

“Too much? You've been throwing up for the last three days, praticaly non-stop.”

“Yeah, but it's logical in my state.”

“Don't care. Don't move.”

He shouldn't have left her. He shouldn't have.

“Varian...”

“I don't like being so far... I don't like not being here for you in this kind of moments.”

“It's okay, nothing bad will happen.”

Except no one can know and it's so scary to be that level of unsure.

“Cassie, please for me, stay home.”

“Okay, okay. But you worry too much.”

He left three months ago. More precisely, he left one hundred and twelve days ago and there is not a minute of his free time, where he hadn't miss her.

“Okay, seeing my face on the screen I understand that you worry, but still, too much.”

“You're radiant.”

“I'm not. But thanks for trying.”

He can't really sleep well lately. The bed is too tight for all the wrong reasons, he started wearing his ring on the left side because people didn't believe him when he said he's married and asked him to take it off during the experiments -no jewel except for wedding band- and he felt naked without it. Cassandra freaked out when she realized his right hand was naked.

“You sleep well?”

“Better than you, I think.”

“It's okay, Love. I just work too much.”

“When I said come back to me soon, I meant alive Varian.”

He chuckles and looks outside.

“What do you see from your window?” she asks.

There is something so sad in those phone calls, that Varian wants to cry every time they hang up.

“I see snow. It's everywhere. I will never complain about home again, I wouldn't see my feet if I had to go out. And you?”

“The garden and some strangely, poor, dying Snowmen.”

“It was a good week-end?”

“Yes, it was, Rapunzel is talking non-stop about a big new project. I was sure she would come with it sooner.”

“Third child on the road, then... I guess it's not surprising they waited that long with already two.”

“Yeah, and they are exhausting.”

“I'm sure they are. Have you seen their parents? Do you think ours will be like this?”

“No. It will be worst. You were complicated and I was- insufferable.”

There is a reason, why today's call, was so important. A reason why, Varian was so obsessed with calling her -that has nothing to do with how pale she was for the last three days.

She was abandoned on this precise date, years ago. And since the moment he learned it, they spent the day together. She called that her Abandon-day with a strange bitter irony, while not crying in his arms after a bad day at work when some of her coworkers made a fuss because some people had forgotten her birthday. It was the moment he also learned that Cassandra doesn't have a real birthday. She picked a day in the calendar, because no-one really knew when it happened.

Last year, Varian had bought thousands of roses -2192- to symbolize every day since the moment they started texting -he was looking for a rose per day since he met her, but the florist and his banker explained him that it was too much. The house was full of flowers and Cassandra was a mix between happy and horrified when she got home.

Varian never regretted, even when he cut his feet on a thorn for the hundredth time in a week, to have done something so “uselessly stupid” because he spent a whole evening looking at a smiling against-her-will Cassandra.

“How do you feel?”

“Better than yesterday.”

“I'm not talking about this...”

“I don't want to worry for things I can't control, Varian. It would be stupid.”

“It's not stupid...”

Varian can't explain why. He can explains what chemical reaction is responsible for you to be sad, but he can't stop that sadness without a long explanation before. People should come with a manual. He just knows, that nothing, Cassandra says, or feels, or does, is stupid. Because he is more intelligent than most, and he loves her. So she is intelligent and he is stupid when he doesn't know how to tell her.

“Anyway!” she says with a big breath “To cheer me up, I was thinking about putting flowers on your mother's grave, knowing I'm too sick to see anyone.”

“Ah! See!”

“Oh! For- Varian, I caught our nephew's flu, I'm not dying!”

When Varian will hit twenty-nine, he still won't have learned to let some things flow, but Cassandra will teach him, one lesson after the other. And time will do the rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not quite the expected reunion, hm? ><


	31. 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there ~
> 
> It's the lats time I will say this on this story QQ I'm so glad to have done this and so sad it stops in the mean time QQ
> 
> Tomorrow will be a little different, I will make a "not chapter" between this one and the final chapter (AAAAAHHHH), so if you have subscribe, I'm sorry but you might receive two messages for this story in something like ten minutes ><
> 
> Sorry for that but it's the best option for me and all so... >>
> 
> I hope you are okay, and I'll leave you with this chapter ~

“You don't love me anymore.”

“Of course I love you.”

“No. Not like you used to. I can feel that things have changed.”

“Cassie, I swear, nothing has changed.”

“Yes, it has. You came back, and things are different.”

“Cassie, love of mine, my only, my life. I swear, that if something has changed, it's just that I love you more than ever.”

“So you will stop loving me soon...”

She starts crying -again- and Varian is desperate.

“Forget I said anything, okay? Come back sit with me.”

“This is ridiculous...” she sobs when he pulls her on his lap.

“No, it's not. I don't care if I don't feel the blood in my legs, okay? I don't.”

“Not this... Me. I'm enormous and always crying and I know it's all non-sense but I'm scared all the time and it's not your fault but I hate this.”

“It's okay...”

“I'm squashing you..”

“No, you are not. The baby is. You, you are as perfect as always.”

It's really complicated to feel at ease with that weight. It would have been easier to cuddle on the couch but Cassandra had a tears crisis while looking at the armchair they barely use and talked about useless persons and abandonment and cried.

So Varian sat in the armchair and she cried because he wasn't with her.

So she sat on his lap and stopped crying. But Varian made the unforgivable mistake to ask her to move a little because she was heavy and he was not comfortable.

She stood. And started crying again.

“Hey, it's okay Cassie, I swear, it is, stop crying...”

“I know... But now the couch is alone...”

The day they learned she was pregnant, Varian cried rivers of happiness in her arms. He has started making plans full of bedroom colors. He has looked for informations on internet about what she had to eat, what would make her comfortable. Everything she could use to have the best pregnancy possible. He knew, of course, about nervous breakdowns and hormonal problems and Cassandra had had hard period sometimes -she would cry because the coffee machine would stop in the middle of her coffee, would talk about a metaphor of life and would swear words Varian thought a little harsh. Nothing impossible to deal with.

Except it was worse than everything he imagined because she has fears coming back from her past all around her ideas, and body insecurities and she knows, and he knows that it's nothing more than shadows coming with the light of a big change, but it's still complicated to deal with all that happens in her head.

“Why do I cry about a couch?”

“Because you are pregnant and it reminds you about your mother and all that happened after.”

“... Why do you have to say this to me?” She asks, on a new verge of tears.

“Because I'm a weird idiot.”

He came back, with his diploma and took a week to be with her. A long, very long week that flew by like a blink of an eye. He found that there was no place for him to work, close to Corona. It was the moment Nuru called and offered a solution. “Let's make one.”

They did. Because Varian had learned -had been taught- to trust himself.

The project was about to be over, they just needed a name for the lab and Varian was supposed to give it in a appointement at six in the afternoon, the day Cassandra's came into the kitchen with a test. “I'm pregnant”. It was hard to find any name for a company after that, because all Varian could think about was “I'm gonna be a Dad!” and it's not a name you can give to a laboratory supposed to help medical research.

As always, Cassandra found the solution.

“Thread”

“Why thread?”

“Because the thread of Destiny. The chains of DNA. The little Raccoon embroidered on your childhood scarf with strands and all the wires in your mother's one. Because it's like you. A little thing that composes something and that will change the whole picture if he was not a part of it. Because with one thread of ink, you can write 'Cassie'. And the fact that it goes on and on, and it reminds me of legacy.”

“Marry me.”

“We've already done that.”

“Marry me again, marry me everyday the world knows.”

“... You really have to stop proposing me every time I say something you like.”

“Never.”

The society was named Thread. And every time he sees the two lines, red and blue that makes the logo, he feels lucky.

“It's gonna be okay...”

“No...”

“Of course it will.”

“I can't control myself, what are we gonna do, when she will be here?”

“What we always do. Our best at being ourselves.”

“I love you...” she sobs again.

It's a day off, and Varian can handle that. He can handle Cassandra's day off, and all the time they will need him and all the moments he will have to be a good dad.

He was taught well.

“Speaking of her... It might be good to choose her name, because I'm not sure calling her baby, is really healthy at this state of your pregnancy.”

“Do you think she feels how strange her mother is..?”

“She feels that she is loved, and expected and that her Grand-grand-Dad is making her a cradle, and her Grand-Dads have already bought her cuddly toys, and her Grand-Ma made her a scarf and her Auntie is going totally crazy about having her meeting her cousins.”

“... You really have to stop talking to her with that little voice...”

“Why?” he laughs.

“Because I feel like you're explaining something to that really idiot people I used to work with.”

Varian hides in her neck. Three month to improve, he can do it.

“So, for her name, have you thought about- Love, why are you crying...?”

“Because I'm crying...”

“Okay, I won't ask again...”

“No, I'm crying, because I'm crying, because it's snowing and it's sad, because snow is gonna melt and things change and I'm tired of crying.”

He holds her, until she rises, dehydrated and leaves to drink in the kitchen. His legs are sore, his brain burning from all he can't solve, but when she comes back, with a name on her trembling lips -the one he was thinking about- Varian knows for sure, that they will succeed in everything, because they complete each other.

He is thirty, more lost than ever, but he has never been more ready, and happy and full of faith for the future.

-But please, let's cuddle on the couch from now on.-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, okay, you had it one chapter early xD


	32. This is not a chapter -again-

Wow, so final chapter. It's kind of crazy ><

This project started in the middle of November and I feel like I've been living with it since the moment the idea appeared. It all started because I just wrote three novels with deadlines and I was exhausted. I was looking for a way to chill, write something light and relaxing, but none of my ideas were, so I asked for ideas around me. “Hey, if you could chose a subject for a SHORT-STORY, what would you pick?” MaryFlower said “Snow. Maybe something with the contrast about the cold of the snow and the heat of a fireplace.” and it was brillant. All I needed, I thought “Oh, might do this with something a little unexpected in it. Nothing more than ten pages.” And then....

Echo: “So what about I cover a lot of situations with Snow, Varian POV and I don't know.. Could start around his fifteen and stop with a first kiss with Cassandra.”

Dusky: “Yep, that's a good idea. But nothing too long, okay, I have things planned in December”

Echo:”Okay, I'll be careful”

3Days later:

Echo: “Hey, so... How do you feel about an advent Calendar... 2pages by chapter so nothing more than 48pages.”

Dusky: “... Not a page more...”

2days later

Echo: “So you know how I always have ideas at the worst moment? Well there is that sentence _said sentence_ that I want to add in the story and you see... it would be easier to do it if the Advent was a Countdown to 2021.”

Dusky: “So... 62pages... Okay... I can take this, but it's gonna be a little rush, you know.”

Echo: “Yeah, no problem, thanks”

Around proof-read.

Dusky: “Why do I have 6 chapters and 30pages on this file..?”

Echo: “Oh. Hm.... Well you see..”

Dusky: “I hate you...”

Echo: “Sorry?”

So it became a countdown to 2021 and I was hoping for it to work because... Dusky and I worked a lot. But I never hoped it would work like this. I can't thank you enough for the comments and the kudos, for the bookmarks and subscriptions. Every hit was something unbelievable. I'm a ball of gratitude.

Thank you so much for walking with Varian during those 31chapters, for having been here. Thank you for every minute you gave this story, that you commented or that you stayed silent. It has been an incredible adventure and a wonderful way to leave 2020 for me and I hope it's been the same for you

Dusky, you haven't correct this, but how was I suppose to post my appreciations and not have a moment for you in it? I couldn't imagine, eight years ago, when you asked for me to guide you to a Uni-classroom, that you would be the one, that would lead me in life one day. You made this possible, with your amazing patience and your eyes for details, with your encouragements and all the time you could give to this project and so many others. Girl, you changed my life and working on this story with you was one of the most precious experience I could ever had dreamed of. Thank you for everything. And Never stop being yourself! -Ps: Send Love to her, she deserves it uu-

As a final word I will just say this. Maryflower, when this project started, it was supposed to be yours, before it evolved in this monster of a story. It became personal, and full of messages I hope everyone would receive. This story is made of things I wished someone had told me and things I've learned. So the whole text can't be all yours and it would be hypocritical for me to act as if it's possible. But that sentence responsible for 7more chapters wouldn't exist without you. I think you'll spot it easily, it's the final line of dialogue ;) I can't dedicate you the whole story, but that last chapter, I can.

It's the last one and it's yours.

I leave you here, with the last Snowflake in the Hourglass of Varian's life I can give you.

Happy New Year, and I hope I'll see you soon.


	33. 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Maryflower

A cry, in the crystal of their night.

Varian feels like it was just a minute ago, that he fell back asleep.

“I'll go...” he announces Cassandra.

She smiles softly, kisses his hand -surely because it's the first thing she can grab- and go back to sleep. It's not going to last long, she never stopped being a devoted mother since she was pregnant.

Varian puts his feet on the floor, the parquet cold against them as he walks in the corridor.

It's hard most of the time, to believe that he is a father. Strangely, it was easier when Cassandra was pregnant. When he heard the first cry and he got his daughter against him, he almost fainted. Such a little life, such a little person, warm and moving, so dependent of him. She was tiny, a tiny thing giving blind look around the room with grey eyes and he became six letters.

A Father. One of the most important word in the world.

Cassandra, as unexpected as it seemed, relaxed. “Now she's ours... I feel like we can do it together.” And Varian started over worrying.

The first day they got home, Varian wrapped her in the burgundy blanket he made with Cassandra's old scarf, and held her the time for her to nap.

The lips of Cassandra invented a new kind of smile that day.

He can't believe, it was six months ago.

“Hey, darling... it's your tooth, huh? Of course it is.” he says to the little crying girl in the cradle.

He takes her in his arms, still surprised by her warmth. She moves her chubby clumsy arms to hold on to him too -or at least it's what he likes to think-, as he hides her head in his shoulder.

It breaks his heart to see her green eyes full of tears.

“I know it hurts... it's a lot all that is happening to you... But I promise you won't remember.”

She is so soft, and she has that smell of powder and something already hers. It's incredible to see that she is a someone. He feels like he holds all the possibilities of the universe when he holds her. Sometimes it scares him, to realize that one day, she will leave home to live a life he's just going to witness.

Cassandra laughs every time he says this. But she takes thousands of picture they glue in albums, so she might be scared too.

“Shh, Shh... Look, I'll show you how things get better, okay?”

They always leave a light on. Cassandra and him never truly close the curtains, it would be unfair to expect from their daughter to be brave in the Dark. The light is not enough for him to show her the frame on the wall, but he knows them by heart.

“Here, it's your Grand-grand-Ma' Mary, with one of your Grand-Mas. She was an historian, she was brave and kind and she had a big heart and a mind full of ideas. And here, it's Daddy, when he was like you, with his Mummy... She is not here, but I will talk to you about her, so you will meet her even if she is already gone. She's with her Mama, now. But don't worry Grand-Ma Arianna will love you like Daddy's mummy would have. And here, do you see? Do you recognize them? Yeah, It's mummy and you. And one day, there will be another photograph, with you and your baby. Or a medal, or whatever you will make that is exceptional.”

He swears, she's just chuckled. Everyone says he is making his mind and she is a baby, and him an over affectionate father, but she is special, and he knows, she understands a lot more than people believe. She turns her big head, with the crown of strawberry blond hair -she will surely lose it at three, but it makes him feels like she has something from his mother- in his direction.

And starts crying again.

“It's time for Mummy to enter, don't you think?” Cassandra offers as she walks in the room.

Varian lets her take their daughter -maybe a little bit reluctant about not holding her anymore.

“Shhhh.... Shhhhh, my Miracle, it's okay... Oh, yeah, I know, it's Daddy and all of his stories, hm? But don't worry, you will always be Mummy's and Daddy's little girl...”

She calms down, big pearls of tears turning into little sparkles of cry and then it's just big pink cheeks.

“How do you always calm her?” he whispers a little jealous.

“Mummies always make things easier.”

Varian pouts. It's unfair. Cassandra leans and kisses the corner of his mouth and Varian chooses to forgive instinct. Cassandra and their daughter were linked for nine months, it's not a bond he can fight.

But he can always be the one giving her a puppy behind Cassandra's back and be her number one fan.

“See this as a chance to hold 'your women'” she says as she leans a little in his direction.

Varian puts an arm around Cassandra's waist, and another on her prosthetic. She has it every time she stays with the baby and hides it under a glove to make sure it's not cold or too hard. But she never feels very confident about holding her without a back-up.

There was a night, when she waked Varian just after leaving the room because she was sure she heard a bip and she was too scared to hold their daughter alone.

Varian sat in her back and held the baby's little head while Cassandra fed her.

He improved the device, bought a second one with another credit. Cassandra simply laughed “We are doomed to stay together with all the papers we signed”.

He was doomed from day one, when she checked if Rapunzel was warm in the cold of the winter. And it's not something they can change anymore, when the dream they made, is laying in their arms.

“Can you believe we made this..?”

“I don't think it's something I will ever truly realize... She rolled today and I was so proud...” Varian has a video, Grand-Dad Xavier was with them when it happened.

“I love you so much... And I feel like my heart is about to explode every time I get to see her... I feel blessed Cassandra.”

“It surely took you time.” she smiles as their daughter moves her head, her little hand squeezing the fabric of Cassandra's shirt.

It took words. On a letter.

Cassandra found it, in the box Varian didn't open since he was five. That stupid box that teaches order and logic in free spirit child. It was there, forgotten, unseen for twenty-five years.

Perfectly where it was supposed to be.

It's a letter his mother wrote when she understood, that she was dying and nothing was to be done. Varian realized that under the layers of loss and pride, and love and regrets, there was an anger and a resentment he never suspected until he saw words of apologizes from his mother.

Cassandra was already pregnant when she gave it to him and Varian knows that she read it before him. He knows that it's one of the things that give her such a trust in him with their baby. He knows, that somehow, in a strange way, she believes in herself more now that she read all that was written. She wrote a paragraph she took out of it in their bedroom.

“We are what we choose to make, with the sum of what we received. We are never alone. We inherit a will. We inherit a love. We arm ourselve and we decide what to keep and what to leave behind. We are the master of a strange ship carved in memories we keep and people we met and of moments we chose to sew with the thread of faith, to sail on our own river of time.”

This letter made them better. Varian read it a thousand time. It talks about pride and care, about problems to be, about regrets and fear.

It talks about love.

Varian felt every word the moment his daughter looked at him. It's beyond everything, what you feel for your child. It's so big, so overwhelming and so everything. It's flowing outside your skin. The heart is too little for all that love.

It's eternal, and it can't die.

“Oh...” Cassandra smiles in his direction. “Do you see this?”

Varian raises the eyes he has kept on his daughter and smiles a little.

“It's time for her to know why her Mummy's engagement ring is so strange...”

Cassandra chuckles as they walk to the window. Varian opens the curtains to let the white light of winter enter the room and the coton candy snowflakes being easier to see.

“Look Mary.” he whispers for her to concentrate on the window “It's snowing.”

Varian is thirty-one and he feels like Life only begins.


End file.
